Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
I'm bewildered that TASVideos doesn't have a run for Dragon Power, which seems like an eminently TASable game that haunted many of our childhoods (so it'd be gratifying to see it dismantled). There's a TAS on YouTube but it uses the Japanese version, which is longer --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wg0ndsgElU
-- and I have to believe it could be improved upon massively.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Another one for the list: Lord of the Rings Vol. 1. It's so horrendously buggy, there has to be a way of bypassing some of the fetch quests in this -- in fact, at least one of them is known to be skippable thanks to a bug. And a TAS should be able to get past the Ringwraith and potentially save a huge chunk of time that way.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Aqfaq wrote:
Hi goldenband!
Yeah, I think the route is doable in real-time. It would be interesting to see speedruns of this.
Agreed! I actually enjoy the game's massive map and near-total emptiness -- at times, it feels more like walking in the woods than any other game I've played -- but there's something pretty great about bypassing almost the whole thing.
BTW if you enjoy bypassing massive chunks of RPGs with huge, empty landscapes, another one that reminds me of FTA is Lord of the Rings Vol. 1 for SNES, which hasn't been TASed as far as I know. It's very, very buggy so maybe there's a way to cut out some of the fetch-quests; as it stands you can skip the Moria gems, and I bet the crossing with the Ringwraith can be survived too.
There's 5P simultaneous play too, so maybe some sort of Nightmare on Elm Street-esque ballet could happen.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Having just beaten this (for the second time), the TAS was a treat to watch. I wonder if the glass vial technique could be applied in a human speedrun? Get Vitality high enough, and I'd imagine it's doable.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
CoolKirby wrote:
That game ends when you run out the clock, right?
Pretty much, though once you kill a certain number of enemies in the final room, you're simply alone there (at least in the Atari 2600 version) until time runs out. It looks like they meant to program an ending (if only a screen freeze) but didn't get around to it.
CoolKirby wrote:
So a TAS would probably need to aim for maximum score
Maybe, but I think "shortest time until enemies stop appearing" or "maximum time remaining on clock [when enemies stop appearing]" would be preferable.
Thanks for the fix!
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Anty-Lemon wrote:
That page predates the vault; it was listed there solely for being boring
Oh, I figured as much. This run isn't boring to me, though (and anyway I'm on record as saying that entertainment should be a secondary criterion IMHO).
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Heh, RoboCop is listed on the Examples Of Bad Game Choices page. I think this run (and, for that matter, FerretWarlord's post) does a nice job of refuting that.
(I turned up that page because I was searching to see if anyone had done a TAS of Chuck Norris SuperKicks on the Atari 2600 or ColecoVision. The reason given is "never ends" -- well, no, it doesn't have an ending, but the game certainly ends for all practical purposes when enemies stop showing up...)
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
I'm surprised that no one's done a Drakkhen TAS yet. I think a pretty tight run ought to be possible, especially since grinding is essentially unnecessary.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
I know it's nearly a decade old, but great work on this! I love the balletic, virtuosic side of TAS, and this demonstrates it perfectly.
There's a completely different (and far more arcade-accurate) port that was released by Tengen in Japan for the Mega Drive. I'd love to see a TAS for that one too.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
An encode would be great (I can't run Bizhawk). If that's a legit bug and not merely an AFD joke, I'd be curious how it works.
Chess problem composers love this stuff -- "White takes back his last move and mates in 1" is a pretty standard setup.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
AndyDick wrote:
Like goldenband mentions, it's pretty difficult to line up your orb at the correct angle to shift the ball down. But this is a TAS so you'd think even the hardest moves are still possible given enough time. Yet the case with the shorter path like you describe actually appears impossible when you reach a certain point. I'm on a train so I can't pull up an image of that level, but I think it was getting into the middle square two squares from the bottom that I completely hit a roadblock. The downward movement would just not work from that position no matter the angle or direction you setup. I don't even know how much time I spent on that one spot, but if someone pulls it off then I'd really like to know how it's done!
Wow, that'd be a trip if it turns out that path is literally impossible. That's the way I kept trying to go on my playthrough, but I don't think I ever made it through that doorway, and ultimately I went around to the right (via the bottom-right corner). Some walkthroughs online recommend the upper path, but I wasn't able to get it working.
I wonder if it's a coding error in the game? That's the only place with an opening between two free-standing parallel pieces -- every other junction (where you'd need to turn) includes at least one piece going perpendicular to the opening.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Looking great so far!
I beat this game on all difficulties a year and a half ago, and the only major undocumented secret I turned up was a hidden level accessible either via password (MYSTICUS) or by a ledge at the very end of the second Nero level. But the end of the hidden level just dumps you back at the start of Nero 2, so it just adds time and wouldn't be relevant.
Otherwise it's all about finding those hidden areas for shortcuts, and you seem to be hitting the ones I remember.
BTW I can't stand this game. :D It's basically everything that was wrong with mid-1990s American developers. Those forced-movement passages in the ice stage are so flaky and maladaptive.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Meant to reply to this too:
samurai goroh wrote:
Those bots are usually greedy, so if you can find an opening with a sacrifice (thinking they are ahead in material), they will likely fall for that trap.
I bought Absolute Chess for the DSiWare and despite using an opening book, it'll fail miserably after it ends (because of sacrifices).
Wow, I'm surprised that a recent engine is vulnerable to that! With the most current high-end chess engines, you're starting to see games with very deep sacrifices that seem more strategic than tactical, since they don't lead to immediate mate or regaining the material. That's terrifying and inspiring, all at once. Here's a recent example between Stockfish and Jonny.
But yeah, positional sacrifices are often lethal against older or weaker software. I don't think it'd work for a TAS, though, since converting the advantage would usually take many moves with long CPU cogitation. If the distance to mate exceeds the horizon effect, then the CPU will think about each move along the way.
The trick to keeping the time low is to make the distance between opening book and mate as short as possible, I think.[/b]
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Anty-Lemon wrote:
There's a guideline for hardest difficulty, and facing Chessmaster instead of Stanley the monkey or something certainly follows that
Agreed. Just to be clear I was referring to the run posted earlier in the thread, done on Newcomer/1 difficulty, which is the default. On that difficulty I'm pretty sure Chessmaster plays either the first move that comes into its "head", or in any event searches no more than 1 move (2 ply) ahead.
jlun2 wrote:
That still won't solve what to do with the many different chess games that exist out there; do they obsolete each other, or all published despite being quite similar to one another?
There's basically no chance that the same line will be optimal against different programs, any more than the same set of inputs would work in RPGs or platformers (pipe down, Mega Man!), so this should be a non-issue. I can say from experience that a prepared line doesn't work even against different revisions of the same program, e.g. Chessmaster and New Chessmaster for Game Boy.
It's 100% trivial to defeat any of these old, 8- and 16-bit chess programs; heck, I've done it, even on the hardest difficulty, and I'm not a master-strength player. Anyone can download a free chess engine that'll destroy any vintage chess program, not to mention any of us. :)
It's not a matter of finding a single brilliant line that works for every program -- that's not going to happen -- but rather of figuring out the weaknesses specific to each program's opening book, algorithms, and/or UI. Each program will almost certainly be unique in that department, so the trick IMHO is finding the shortest path to victory in any particular program, either in terms of time or in moves, against the CPU at its max setting.
That's normally a very slow setting, but there's a way around it: as long as the CPU is in its opening book (tables of prepared opening moves), it normally moves instantaneously. An approach that exploits that is likely to be both effective and quick; find a data error, or a line that's been erroneously included that leads to an immediate forced mate, and you've struck gold.
If a game-breaking vulnerability can't be found in the opening book, then memory corruption might let you trick the CPU into playing the "wrong" move, e.g. by getting it to look at the wrong part of its opening book for its next move. Since 1. f4 is a normal opening move (Bird's Opening), find some way to get it to play 2. g4, and you've got Fool's Mate. But that's a long shot.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Nice work on this. I just played through the full game today, partly inspired by the TAS.
Level 29 (aka Enigma Chamber 29) is a freakin' nightmare, and it's revealing that the TAS of the level still takes a good while (by TAS standards). Getting the ball in the maze to move downward is incredibly finicky for no clear reason -- every other direction is more responsive.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
On Hard, enemies take more hits IIRC (can't remember if bosses do too), so if there are any unavoidable foes that'd easily undo any gains on the timer.
I always thought this game was a lot better than people say, with clever stage design and great music. The collision detection makes perfect sense if you know you're never supposed to pursue enemies, but always let them come to you; the manual even says as much. The platforming/play control gets pretty wonky sometimes, though.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Why don't we look at a simpler premise: can anyone extract the opening book from Chessmaster? If we can find an error -- a line that leads directly to a forced mate, ideally -- then we can exploit it, most of the CPU's moves will be instantaneous, and we won't need to dumb it down in order to get a quick win.
Beating the game on Newcomer/1 difficulty (as in the run posted earlier) establishes a "fastest possible" run, I suppose. But I'd like to see the CPU taken down at its best by exploiting its flaws (and no, the menu command that tells it to move immediately isn't one of them).
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Sounds like you're doing good work. :) Figuring out the optimal moment to grind is tricky, but it sounds like you've picked a good spot. It's a pity that earning scrolls is never organic to the main quest path.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
I was playing this game recently, and I suspect you're right about the additional skills -- they do make a huge difference in the amount of damage you do per attack, especially the spin kick move. And of course, you can also buy the ability to walk faster.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Warp wrote:
I would say that if a chess (or whichever game) engine can be manipulated to make any arbitrary moves, that's not as interesting as playing an optimal game against a stronger engine that can't be affected so fundamentally.
Not necessarily, or at least I'd be interested in a TAS that (for instance) finds a way to manipulate RAM directly to deceive the CPU into a bad line. Given what can be pulled off with games like International Superstar Soccer Deluxe, I'd like to think at least one poorly-programmed chess program out there can be smacked around with a storm of unexpected inputs at the right time.
Warp wrote:
(I would guess that most of the even slightly competent chess engines cannot be manipulated into making moves you want because, among other things, they use opening libraries, and obviously won't make bad moves at least if the player follows a standard opening. It becomes fuzzier if the player makes a move not in any standard opening, but even then I doubt a decent engine can be manipulated into making egregiously bad moves, at least if it has time to process even a modest amount of plies.)
If the CPU isn't being directly manipulated through RAM corruption etc., you're not going to get it to move 1. f3 and 2. g4. OTOH, you can absolutely take advantage of bad opening book programming to get the CPU to move instantly for 10-12 moves, only to end up in a lost position. That would actually be ideal, since you fly through the game and then wrap it up quickly. And opening books have certainly been known to contain errors and busted lines of play, though I don't immediately know of any so egregious as to walk the CPU into immediate checkmate.
Beyond that, there are known "anti-computer" styles of play, obviously not effective against current engines, that trick the CPU into accepting sacrifices that a human player can see will lose, but whose consequences just exceed the computer's move depth. I know of one major chess publication in the 1990s that had a column specifically dedicated to making computers look stupid, and Tim Krabbé has also done some investigating in that direction.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Tangent wrote:
One run against one AI MIGHT be enough of a curiosity to slip in, but then what? The strategy and play isn't going to change for any other chess game. You're just going to get a bunch of nigh identical runs with slight variations due to different AI quirks or things like the time it takes to flip a piece.
This is extremely unlikely. The algorithms and opening books for 8- and 16-bit chess games vary dramatically. I can say from experience that even different iterations of the same program (e.g. Chessmaster and New Chessmaster on Game Boy) will have completely different responses to the same move, sometimes as early as move 2 or 3. And tricks or prepared lines that work on one program will fall completely flat on another, believe me.
If you're able to find an input sequence to trigger arbitrary moves by the CPU, then sure, you might get identical games. But the good news is, they'd only be 2-3 moves long anyway. :) If you can force the CPU to make the move of your choosing from the beginning, then Fool's Mate (or a similar line, e.g. 1. e4 d5 2. exd5 Qxd5 3. Ke2?? Qe4#) will end the game almost as soon as it started.
Chess TAS are a very specialist niche, but they're likely to be far subtler and more challenging than you're making them out to be. Whether they'll be entertaining to the casual viewer, well, TBH I don't really care: as I've made clear elsewhere, entertainment is a secondary priority for me.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Personman wrote:
This sums up something I've felt for a long time very succinctly. I'm really glad there's growing momentum for broader inclusivity - the Vault was a big step forward, but it's time for more!
Hey, thanks very much, and (unsurprisingly) I agree with your second sentence. :)
evknucklehead wrote:
The shortest possible ending in Chess is The Fool's Mate, which would be quite the challenge to convince a chess program to do, but far from impossible. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure that's what the previously rejected Chess TAS did, but a more sophisticated program like the Chessmaster series would be far more difficult.
Sorry, I should've been more precise -- I'm a tournament chessplayer so I know about Fool's Mate, though I've never (to my recollection) had the pleasure of delivering it. :) I've administered my share of Scholar's Mates, though, and once had a game that went 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 e6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nc6 5. Nb5 Nge7?? 6. Nd6#.
What I meant to address was the potential conflict in a chess TAS between the shortest path to mate in # of moves -- which might involve a lot of cogitation from the CPU -- and the shortest path in clock time, which might well come from a less-dramatic line that rapidly simplifies to a winning endgame, thus encouraging the CPU to think less. But that depends on a ton of factors, including whether the program uses a fixed search depth, a fixed search time (Battle Chess on 3DO seems to do this, bizarrely enough), or whatever else.
Of course if the CPU can be manipulated into 1. f3 and 2. g4 through timing and controller inputs, that's great. But usually a quick checkmate over a computer requires a horizon effect, e.g. a mating attack with sacrifices that the CPU can't quite calculate until it's too late, so it greedily accepts everything you throw at it.
BTW I also question playing on low difficulty. The ideal trick would be engine manipulation on the highest level, somehow getting the thing to commit suicide. I don't think a menu command to force the CPU to move early would be legit -- IIRC, Chessmaster denies you a victory screen for that -- but a series on inputs that have the same effect might be OK. I assume the program ireads some register to introduce randomness and keep the game from being deterministic (CPU playing the same openings every time), though some chess games are in fact deterministic (Star Wars Chess IIRC).
Novelty chess games like Battle Chess and Star Wars Chess are usually pretty weak, BTW, and might be a good candidate for attack.
grassini wrote:
the vault is for technical achievements,just like this one.The no sports game rules is only for games where nothing meaningful can be done to speedup the process of finishing the game.
Hey, I'm honored to be in your sig! Would you mind correcting my grammatical error? I should've written "existing rule prevents".
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
Hey, thanks for the solidarity! :D
I'm 100% in favor of adding some kind of research tier for TASes that are boring to watch, or otherwise repetitive, but absolutely capture an optimal strategy or other significant achievement for that game.
For example, take chess games: what's the shortest path to checkmate? There must be a line that you can trick Chessmaster into following. But will the shorter line in moves be the shortest line in clock time? It could be that a very fast simplification to a winning endgame will take more moves, but encourage the CPU to cogitate less.
I'm also very interested in what happens with perfect play in tennis games and whether there's any unknown content triggered thereby. I already know Andre Agassi Tennis for Genesis gives you a secret screen if you win every match, but it doesn't appear to give you a reward for never losing a point.