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Warepire wrote:
The main problem is random frames. Sometimes a load screen in the game passes one frame faster/slower. It is completely random, no way to control this in the game, which means there is probably a bug somewhere in Hourglass, or something needing to be hooked and controlled.
Well, I would not say it's a bug, but a unimplemented functionality. Hourglass detects frames by looking for periodic "wait" calls with a constant time length by the main thread.
During the SMB loading screen, the game is creating two extra threads to deal with building the level, and the main thread is just waiting for the extra threads to finish their job. So hourglass does not know where to place frame boundaries.
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I've made several tests with Naija, to see how she can be controlled with TAS tools. Here is an example:
Link to video
However, a full 106% TAS requires making Hourglass much more robust.
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Answers to general questions like "my game is not working, why?" and "When my game will be supported" are: "I don't have a clue" and "I first need to understand how Hourglass exactly work, this may take some time".
Seriously, OpenGL games are not well supported, because it actually converts all OpenGL textures into Direct3D textures, to only have to support one technology (e.g. for AVI dumping or save states). However, not all OpenGL functions are supported right now, and even if so, conversion into D3D can be buggy.
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Hello
C'est déjà une très bonne nouvelle que tu puisses lancer Spelunky avec Hourglass !
C'est la version HD ou l'original ?
Pour les save states, ça n'a jamais fait crasher mon OS, juste le programme...
Le système recommendé est XP 32bits, donc avec ton Win8 64bits, tu es assez loin :S
Tu peux essayer de décocher "Store Video Memory in Savestates" et "Store Guarded Memory Pages in Savestates" dans un des menus. Essaie de désactiver Aero (on peut faire ça avec Win8 ??)
EDIT : J'ai testé sur le jeu original, et les save states ont fonctionné sans aucun problème, avec la config originale (sous Win7 32bits) !
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For a Windows game, there is Braid (any%).
There is a short sequence of 8 seconds in stage 6-5, and a longer one if you add the previous 7 seconds, making 15 seconds in total.
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Derakon wrote:
Maybe some brief playaround moments were missed (e.g. with the lumpy Meat Boy clones in the Rapture)
Yes, you're right. The problem with these stalkers is that they have a few patterns, and which one you get is random. By random, I mean really random, a randomness that depends on something else than the whole input list.
That considerably raises the time spent on these levels, as for every crash, I have to start several times to get the good pattern to be able to continue.
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Patashu wrote:
slamo wrote:
Interesting, you'd think the detail would have an effect on it.
It might load the same amount of level information no matter what detail it plans to render (e.g. the stuff in the level is not separated in such a way that it could do faster loading)
Sorry, I wasn't clear: setting the -ultralowdetail mode reduced loading times, but didn't reduced the variations of loading times between runs.
I'm working on the any%, what I'm doing is trying to get the longest series of levels without desync, capture them, and then using video editing tools to reconstruct the full any% run.
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slamo wrote:
Are you using the "-lowdetail" command line parameter? There's a chance it would make loading times more consistent and possibly cause less crashes as well.
Yes, I'm working on individual levels in -ultralowdetail mode, and I will probably capture in -highdetail mode. Both provide the same amount of desync.
What I do to cancel desyncs when working on levels is starting with no input during 1-2 seconds, then a death, and then the actual level completion. As there are no variable loading times after a death, I'm always synced for the actual level completion.
However, when building a complete input file of, let's say, a full world, there are too many places of potential desyncs, so that it's unrealistic to hope for a full sync.
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Hi everyone,
I'm currently TASing Super Meat Boy. One problem is that it has undeterministic loading screens everywhere. In two different playbacks, these loading times can take +/- 1 frame. When adding up, getting a fully-synced movie file of the whole game would be impossible.
I'm doing stage by stage for now. So what I will probably do is making an AVI capture of every level, and concatenate them as they would if I were to play normally. However, it couldn't submit anything to TASVideos.
Is there any history on that kind of issue ?
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Finally, I managed to have a working PC. I did Forest already (World 1), but the problem is that loading times take a varying number of frames, so it's really hard to sync :(
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Hi everyone,
I patched the last version of hourglass to support Super Meat Boy. I did two things:
- I redirect the keyboard keys to xbox360 buttons, because when launching SMB through hourglass, the keyboard is no longer scanned. I used this mapping (althrough you should be able to remap them):
Keyboard Xbox360
------------------
Enter Start
Arrows D-pad
W A
X X
B B
Y Y
------------------
I don't remember for R/L, but you shouldn't need them.
Now inputs works, and also record/playback. There are no desync except for all loading screens (when you see a wheel rotating). If you don't use fast-forward during loading screens and don't use first-frame inputs in the menus, you should be fine.
- Save states. Well, that's the problem. I hooked up XAudio2 to not play anything (you won't have any sound), so that it doesn't mess up with save states.
Then, uncheck "Store Video Memory in Savestates" and "Store Guarded Memory Pages in Savestates" for more stability.
Now, all that matters is your graphic card.
Intel Graphic HD: crashed 90% of the time
Intel Graphic HD 4000: crashed 50% of the time
NVidia Quadro FX 580: crashed 10% of the time.
Dual graphic cards (Intel + Nvidia): Doesn't even launch, I had to deactivate the NVidia card :(
I really want to work on this TAS. My problem is that I don't have a good config at home. My PC at work has the NVidia card, but as I'm writing my PhD, it would be a *terrible* idea to start TASing this game on that computer.
So I'm sharing this patched version. If nobody will work on this TAS in 3 months, I should by then have time again to do it. If someone is willing to do it... good luck !
You should definitively check Individual Levels from Exo, I worked on the Forest levels a bit, and it was *really* difficult to get the same times as Exo.
EDIT: Tested on Window 7 32-bit. 64-bit version might not work at all. Also, the steam version of the game works fine, as soon as you exit Steam before launching the game with Hourglass.
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I tried Rogue Legacy demo. It crashed from startup with hourglass. However, it asked me to install .NET framework and XNA framework, and I think we already observed that XNA games are not working.
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I'm also interested in continuing the development of this software. I would really like it to support Super Meat Boy, and there might only be little work to support it (right now, the keyboard inputs are captured but not send to the game).
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Petit remontage de topic.
Je trouve que commenter un TAS est très difficile. Je viens de faire l'expérience sur mon TAS de Braid, et je suis très frustré de la maigre quantité de choses qu'il est possible de dire pendant la durée du run. Au final (même si je n'ai pas encore vu la version montée), cela donnera un commentaire qui part un peu dans tous les sens.
Quel pourrait-être le meilleur format pour commenter des TAS ? Faudrait-il prendre du temps avant pour présenter, ou après pour revenir sur les techniques utilisées ? Reprendre des passages au ralenti ou en frame advance ? Ca demanderait un boulot bien plus important.
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About the youtube video added recently on the TASVideo channel, there is a progressive audio-video desync.
I encontered the same problem while encoding myself this run, and the solution that I found was to set the video fps to 60.05
I don't know what is going on, but it did solve this problem.
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Thanks Patashu.
Well, it might save a very small amount of time in stage 2-4, but I didn't check it yet.
By triggering the glitch before bringing the goomba to the left, it is possible to get the first puzzle piece earlier thanks to the extra leftward inertia (taking the ladder does not cancel the glitch). With this, it might be faster to take the door and re-enter the stage to reset the position of the goombas. At best, it's like a one-second improvement.
