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Can you try recording the screen and see if it happens soon enough to get captured? Might help to trace it. Not insisting, just remembering what I used to do when AnS was developing taseditor and I was the main user.
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This is progressbar related once again. Jeez, that crap gave us so much trouble that I'll make it optional or remove entirely. Can you come up with reliable repro steps though?
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Always use the latest version.
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True, I'm not introducing this new policy, as I have no authority for that. I'm just trying to resolve the questionable parts of the idea. I'm not even exactly defending the approach I'm coming up with.
Right now, we have this emulator ability, and a chance that using ROM swaps on console, the RAM could be tweaked. Even 1/100 is a decent chance. We know that we can't achieve arbitrary RAM states just by using a specific console or by resetting.
The earlier thread I linked shows that people don't mind some sort of preset RAM state. The particular scenario we're dealing with here, wasn't discussed back then, so probably they would react differently this time.
I think after this movie is judged, we could make a summarized post there, addressing this submission's problems, and discuss this altogether again.
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grassini wrote:
how would the initial ram be created in a reproduction on console?
A cart with a ROM on it that just sets those values and is then replaced with the actual game cart.
True wrote:
feos wrote:
But elaborate, is this exact RAM state achievable with the setter cart (given we're using a toploader NES or Famicom AV)? To me, if it's possible, it looks like a dirty SRAM movie that uses a verification movie to achieve that SRAM, and that movie doesn't have to be optimal, it should just be valid.
Yes, it is possible.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Can you unembed (or shrink) the image from Post #441020?
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True wrote:
feos wrote:
But if such a cart could set any addresses to anything, then ROM switching isn't required, the emulator could just preset those directly.
This doesn't make sense, based on everything else written; can you clarify? Because for what we've written, on a console, ROM switching would be required to match an unlikely starting state arbitrarily specified in the emulator.
I mean an emulator feature to switch ROMs isn't required.
True wrote:
Yes, it is possible. But here's some differences from simple dirty save RAM:
- In dirty save RAM, the same game that is being played is also used in verification. In this case, completely different code is run. The code created is arbitrary and created by the user or verifier.
- As the code is different, this implies carts have been swapped. Are cart swaps now allowed? If so, should the emulator support this?
- Such a ROM can do far more than set memory. It's rather arbitrary to draw the line at just setting memory. Do we only allow certain instruction sequences to accommodate for an emulator's settings?
- If our goal is to TAS games, and not specific emulations of games, then why would the actual game on console as originally released come second to the game emulated?
But what could be the differences introduced by any ROM we previously run other than just memory state? If this policy is added in the way I see it, only the initial RAM state itself would matter, not what could possibly lead to it, unless we're sure such a state is impossible at all.
True wrote:
feos wrote:
That's an important note. As I said, if we can't know for sure that something is possible, we can't rely on it in the policies.
This is not how current policies here are formed. Besides, the memory set on the run before, as arbitrarily specified, is statistically impossible. Because it is just statistics, and not hard impossibility, if such reasoning was followed, then are we truly TASing the game then as it is expected to be run, or just some imaginary arbitrary setup of it?
First, I meant the potential new policy, to handle such runs. Second, if it is reproduce on console without (the traditional meaning of) cheating, we could allow it.
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Interesting. But I feel a bit exhausted after SuperC and I still have stuff to debug in Ninja Gaiden, so I dunno when I get around to checking this one. The important thing though, how does the game write wrong values to zero page? This shouldn't happen, and if it does, it should be examined.
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True wrote:
feos, this specific run uses a runner-chosen initialization value that is, in all likelihood, _statistically impossible_ to achieve on console. Where is the line drawn?
That's an important note. As I said, if we can't know for sure that something is possible, we can't rely on it in the policies. But elaborate, is this exact RAM state achievable with the setter cart (given we're using a toploader NES or Famicom AV)? To me, if it's possible, it looks like a dirty SRAM movie that uses a verification movie to achieve that SRAM, and that movie doesn't have to be optimal, it should just be valid. But if such a cart could set any addresses to anything, then ROM switching isn't required, the emulator could just preset those directly.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Drawing a reasonable line is indeed impossible with all this statistical instability. But if we just allow the "special cart that presets the values" scheme, that would result in no limits to the technique whatsoever, unless that's an address the game can not write to. That way you could set up some heavier exploits than we used to have, or even inject a payload directly into RAM, but still, that would be a cheap advantage over all the existing runs. No one wants cheap challenges that aren't justified. Probably being a Vault run could justify that though.
Anyway, we had a whole thread about this already. And looking at it, I see that Vault allowing this technique is something people are okay with.
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Alyosha wrote:
Why would it not obsolete the existing run? Start up RAM is already manipulated with the default RAM setting, it's just that that manipulation was consistent until now. To me it seems like just adding another variable to optimize (while still being physically reasonable of course, as True points out.)
Because if something is truly random (which bits real consoles set occasionally), you can't rely on it to make site rules. You can't set limits to usage of some technique that would be sane to us and non-arbitrary, if it's based on true randomness, and we can't be sure setting bit #9000 is possible at least on one particular console, or on none of them. We could run a test rom that freezes and shows the startup values, but we can not test 100% of the actual consoles, so our statistics won't give the guarantee it can't happen otherwise. That would still be nice to run such a test, to determine what is more likely to happen, but that's still unreliable to setup a new site policy after that.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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True, maybe you could add your twitch link to the signature? I have it bookmarked, but for instant reference that way would be easier.
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It freezes there no matter what?
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Right, I remember discussing this with adelikat on IRC some time ago, when he was about to add this feature, and his opinion (and mine too) is that such runs shouldn't be obsoleting the ones that don't manipulate startup RAM. Because it won't be a fair competition, after more than a whole decade of not using this in TASes.
Technically though, this would be equal to running a self made ROM that sets the values we want to the pattern we wish, and then injecting the actual game we'll be playing. Not a gameplay thing either, so yeah, this adds some cheating fur to the concept, even though it's not exactly that. So to make things clear and consistent, we shouldn't obsolete the old style (gameplay based) runs.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Mecha Richter wrote:
This thread is 8 years old. Why respond to it? lol
Our policy is to stick to existing threads as long as they're relevant, regardless of their age (and merge them all into one if necessary), because that helps to keep all the finds in one consistent place, instantly visible to everyone who starts the research on a particular game.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General-purpose_computing_on_graphics_processing_units
Has this been used at least once? How applicable can this be, considering all the CPU emulation difficulties that slow down the cores? Does the task we'll be giving to the GPU has to be of a threaded nature, so the GPU parallelizes it, or anything straightforward like traditional interpreter core will also work? I'm probably wording this poorly, just curious if anyone has already pondered this idea.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
To get a better idea of what kind of impact this would have, I decided to look at a number of NES games and see which access uninitialized RAM.
I modified Bizhawk slightly to monitor the RAM usage. If the game read from a RAM address before it has written to it, I recorded that. I also recorded what addresses were written to.
I took a list of NES games that the site has movies for, ran them for 600 frames each in that modified Bizhawk, and then outputted the data collected. I then turned the data into images to make it easier to digest the information.
Here is the image set (warning: large/long images)
Each 8x8 pixel block represents a RAM address, starting at 0x0000 at the top left, and ending at 0x07FF at the bottom right. The colors mean the following:
Black - RAM was not read from or written to (still uninitialized)
Green - RAM was written to first
Red - RAM was read from before it was initialized, and still hasn't been written to (still uninitialized)
Orange - RAM was read from before it was initialized, but has since been written to
Keep in mind that this data is from only 600 frames of the game, and with no input. The results may change if input is given or the analysis is run for longer.
You can tell from the images that a large number of games access uninitialized memory, but I'm not sure what they are doing with it. As other people have said, some games start up in a different way depending on the initial state of the RAM. Being able to control this initial state might be beneficial to movie authors, but I'll leave that up to other users who know more about each game to determine. This data was simply to get an idea of how many games might be impacted by this new policy.
Also, if anyone is interested in seeing my changes to Bizhawk or the raw data I made the pictures from I'll be happy to post it.
Though, I only remember one game that can be improved using this feature: Friday 13th.
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Won't it result in a Pulseman game situation, where fastest speed is barely watchable, and there is a run that avoids that movement glitch and is way more enjoyable?
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hegyak wrote:
Flameberger wrote:
feos wrote:
It still has those insane empty spaces, right?
Yeah, still a ton of blank space on the sides and underneath.
This is probably a Text Size issue for Windows.
Or/and DPI not being 100%.
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It still has those insane empty spaces, right?
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It looks like your system just doesn't care, the font is also wrong. zeromus probably knows the reason, as it's not really tastudio related. I don't know if he's still following this thread, post in the Bugs one if he doesn't show up here in a few days.
Anyway, try pixel hunting and find that border between branches and markers, that border is movable.
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Are you sure you watched the real encode of the movie? That's exactly how it looks like.
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r57shell wrote:
Need to describe more detailed?
Submission #5251 wrote:
What feos and Koh1fds have done to the xipo's run.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
