Posts for mattk210

Posted: 9/21/2015 11:08 AM
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mattk210
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Joined: 8/15/2008
Posts: 19
just saw TKDL tweet about this, congrats. Glad you didn't get demoralized and just give up. There's 2 slightly different layouts of F0, do you know where they come from? I always assumed one was on PSX and one was on DS, but the F0 in this run is the same as the DS one.
Posted: 9/6/2015 10:47 AM
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mattk210
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certainly i didn't withhold that information just to say it now and make things worse. I only thought to check the realtime records when i was looking for a list of tas records all in one place. And I think it's important information that should be known in this context! In any case the japanese community seems to be very active/competitive compared to the english-speaking community. So I don't think it's so bad to get worse times than them!
Posted: 9/6/2015 7:07 AM
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mattk210
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I guess this is not what you want to hear, but actually all your times are worse than the best human records as well (except F31, which seems to be maxed). As far as I know, these are all of TKDL's latest TAS records https://onedrive.live.com/?id=889B1157913CBFE3%21143&cid=889B1157913CBFE3&group=0 and here is a listing of human records http://eventer.jp/kawase/
Posted: 9/5/2015 7:13 PM
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mattk210
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Yes, I check this site very infrequently. But it looks like the time from submission to publication was only a few days, give me a break! As far as I know, TKDL announces all his records on twitter, and sometimes even streams his work. But obviously everything is all in Japanese. Probably he has some listing of all his records, I'll have a look later (I'm typing this just before takeoff on a plane!)
Posted: 9/5/2015 9:21 AM
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mattk210
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Hi. I love this game and follow TKDL on twitter. It seems like your times are actually all slower or equal to TKDL's best? For example, their record for F11 is 4:56.00 https://onedrive.live.com/?id=889B1157913CBFE3%21282&cid=889B1157913CBFE3&group=0&parId=889B1157913CBFE3%21143&o=OneUp I apologize if I'm mistaken!
Posted: 2/23/2011 3:07 PM
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mattk210
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mew2king's data can be viewed here: http://web.archive.org/web/20071112141938/http://members.aol.com/oovideogamegodoo/myhomepage/profile.html
Posted: 4/11/2010 8:59 AM
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mattk210
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Definitely. A genre I think is unexplored and suited for TASing is physics-based games. World of Goo is a good example. Why not combine physically-simulated construction with a platformer? But I'm not sure about the importance of AI. I think a TAS will find ways to make even the best AIs look stupid. Focus on enemies with interesting features, rather than smart ones, I think.
Posted: 4/11/2010 6:59 AM
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mattk210
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In AS3, Flash calculations are actually reasonably fast. Bad performance is almost always due to rendering - everything is anti-aliased and vector-rendered without GPU support. This appears to be changing with the introduction of GPU acceleration for Flash video. I would say that the ideal development platform would depend on the kind of game you want to make. Flash is a bad choice for a SNES-style sprite based platform game - maybe python and some libraries would be a good idea here? For a 3D game I would definitely suggest unity3D. There is the obvious advantage that Flash can be embedded in web pages so the TASes can be watched online, without a hefty video download. Same situation with unity3D, provided the user has a small plugin. I have seen a lot of community-led games die though. They need an able, enthusiastic leader. edit: I also have some ideas about what features should be in a game designed for TASing!
    super synch-robustness - it would be nice to be able to stitch large portions of runs together, and hopefully not have to deal with lag-frames, loading times or luck-based events (in fact, a new random function would have to be specially written to ensure determinism) lots of little tricks - TASes are great because of abuse of all the little features the designers put in. open world/non-linear - route planning and sequence breaking are interesting everything skippable - I'm tired of watching dialogue or seeing the super metroid opening cutscene for the millionth time
edit again: and also a small state space so a full log of states can be stored along with the input file to allow for proper rewinding, even with a video style seeker!
Posted: 3/18/2010 2:20 AM
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mattk210
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Flash has a "frames"metaphor but this is for flash animation, not interactive games. Stepping through frames is not analogous to stepping through game logic, as most flash games spend the whole game "stopped" on only a handful of "frames" (if you rightclick and choose "stop" it will usually not stop a game) I believe there are existing flash emulators but I don't think any of them are complete or accurate at the level a TAS would need them.
Posted: 11/21/2009 11:12 PM
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mattk210
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personally I don't like the idea of low par at all, whether I'm playing unassisted or for this TAS. Being rewarded for using less of the game seems backward for me - especially if most levels can be done with zero summons - it would just be a (bad) platformer for those levels. Derakon's idea seems like it could work but I'd personally prefer a proper goal rather than just "be entertaining".
Posted: 11/21/2009 2:38 PM
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mattk210
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another infrequent poster here with an opinion If what cpadolf says is true, "the only places we know it can be used is to skip Mother Brain, the baby metroid and the gravity statue walk.", I would advocate using the glitch. Some may disagree, but I think Tourian is one of the more boring parts of the run (particularly the second form of mother brain), and the statue walk has no entertainment value, so I don't think the run would lose anything important if the glitch were used. There is also the wow factor from seeing something so unexpected which is a great part of TASing to me. And it won't be as long and boring as the statue room climb in the low% run. My opinion would change if xray glitching could be used to do something more radical like glitching the memory that holds item collection rate without actually collecting the items. I think the spacetime beam is in a different category because IIRC Kejardon said it may behave differently on console vs emulator, or even between two different SNESs.
Posted: 11/21/2009 8:03 AM
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mattk210
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but scribblenauts is all about the summoning! If you do most levels without summoning, we'd see so little of what makes the game so great! maybe the extra letters glitch would have to be banned - perhaps "if two words summon the same item only one may be used"
Posted: 11/21/2009 5:17 AM
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mattk210
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Joined: 8/15/2008
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is it a bad thing to make it harder to optimize? Would make it more interesting I think, and if the "route planning" (well actually summon planning I guess) is not perfect, nobody would notice. Also the game rewards you for using an item you haven't used before so maybe the goal is not that arbitrary Going for low-par would almost always involve glitching the star to you through walls with a perfectly placed spring each time, except the levels you can complete with zero summons. That would hardly be very entertaining as there's so much diversity that would be untapped.
Posted: 11/20/2009 11:21 AM
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mattk210
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oh OK, I see. i was assuming nitsuja's tasing system he's building would just make any .exe tasable (within reason), and that would include flash .exe's.
Posted: 11/20/2009 11:14 AM
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mattk210
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you don't need to decompile to create an .exe from a .swf The flash authorship tool has the option "create projector" in the file menu when opening a .swf, and there are other third party tools like SWF studio that take a .swf and spit out an .exe (by embedding the flash player in the .exe I believe). Anyway, I'm asking mainly because of a game called N with a pretty big highscoring/speedrunning community, and this game comes as an .exe anyway.
Posted: 11/20/2009 10:29 AM
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mattk210
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Wow! Is it likely flash games will work? They can be made into a standalone .exe I believe.
Posted: 11/18/2009 2:12 AM
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mattk210
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Joined: 8/15/2008
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I think excite truck would be very entertaining (going for score rather than time), because you're rewarded for close calls and weaving through trees, and perfectly smashing the other trucks would surely be entertaining. Not sure if I'd want to watch the whole game though because some of the levels are quite similar
Posted: 11/18/2009 2:06 AM
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mattk210
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it would probably be quite boring because the same thing would be done most levels (spring or vending machine glitch). An idea: what about doing the whole game without repeating any items
Posted: 8/15/2008 10:39 AM
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mattk210
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Hi, I'm new I just wanted to throw some stuff out there: damage is indeed random, it can vary by as much as 2 points in some circumstances. Each unit's health is out of 100, but it only shows out of 10. I _think_ that when you heal a unit it resets to a multiple of 10 but this is very easily checked with memory watching. I'd really like to see a good run of this game, but to distinguish it as a TAS I think it needs to go for real-time, so moving many units per turn may not be optimal. This would create more interesting strategy too. I also think that this run needs to be taken very slowly. At one point I was really into it, and like chess, I don't think there's a real "best strategy". The AI can be manipulated by many different factors and there are so many options. That said, in the missions where it's possible, HQ capture is almost always faster, especially when aiming for real time.