Posts for moozooh

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Posted: 8/7/2015 2:40 PM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away
Virtually all the useful memory addresses are listed on the resources page. The problem with it is that the rest of the page is about 6-7 years out of date (this is my fault as well) and thus missing a lot of new tricks discovered since then. This is important because some of them are, by this point, widely used and can save a lot of time, such as the various state-preserving and state-canceling tricks and some of the left+right tricks (that, although technically known for a decade, have found new uses). Your best bet would be to learn the basics listed there (watch the demos!) then load some of the runs made in the recent 3-4 years and watch them in frame advance with input display on. Certain tricks will not be easy to pick up, but you might be able to infer their meaning from general concepts: for instance, look at how players use mockball immediately after picking up the first missile pack while landing on the part of the still-opening hatch in ball form; despite the sudden change in vertical position the movement isn't interrupted. This works because there are several frames during morphing animation where it cannot be interrupted and all of its properties (such as forward momentum) are fixed—a trait it shares with many other uninterruptible animations. By the time this "grace period" ends the ball is already on level ground and can continue moving with the forward momentum it gained earlier. Make sure to experiment heavily with damage boosts: depending on the direction Samus is facing and the amount of frames you're waiting before initiating the backflip your positioning will be different. Same with bomb jumps. A good rule of thumb is that running at full speed (even pre-Speed Booster) is always faster than jumping or rolling, so if you have enough ground to gain full momentum, minimize your air time. When this isn't possible, see if you can CWJ or use mockball to preserve momentum for as long as feasible. Keep in mind that running down slopes is sensitive to arm-pumping because what arm-pumping does is shifting your position forward by a pixel, which may lead to your hitbox losing contact with the ground. In this case you will want to skip some of the pumps or time them differently to remain on the ground. Another good rule of thumb is that it doesn't matter how early a chain of events starts, the only important thing is how early it finishes. For instance, you can pick up an item earlier than in a published run, but will lose the advantage (and more) by the time you've run out of the room because the positioning that allows faster pickup doesn't put you into an optimal escape setup. This is why you should always measure your optimization against other runs in points that are fully comparable to avoid the risk of "unforeseen" losses. A good example is the Draygon kill: you can deliver the finishing blow as soon as it shows up from the edge of the screen, but it will take longer for its dying animation to reach the center of the screen. A bit more on using run button: if you want to gain as much momentum as possible while waiting for the door to open or something like that, the first thing you do is skipping arm pumps as they don't make any difference to Samus's physical momentum. If that isn't enough, you can try skip pressing the run button on some frames: due to accumulation of speed, skipping an earlier keypress would put you far behind compared to skipping a later keypress (that happens shortly before the speed is capped). If all else fails, there are momentum preservation techniques that involve releasing the direction button at the start of the run.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 8/7/2015 7:52 AM
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moozooh
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Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
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Many games have a boolean "finished" flag which helps us identify if the game considers itself finished in case credits are skipped (like in the SMW glitch run). This TAS jumps to the credits, but neither it nor the previous glitched TAS confirm that "show credits early" equates to "game is finished". I'm not saying that it necessarily means this run or its predecessor should be somehow discarded, but this needs to be looked at very carefully. It is possible that in this case the game indeed considers itself finished, but still needs to pull some progress information to show the ending properly, and since the addresses it points to are empty, softlocking is perfectly normal and unavoidable without further memory manipulation that may or may not be feasible.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 8/6/2015 6:30 PM
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moozooh
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Warning: this does exactly what it says on the tin: 52 gameovers in a row. About 17.5 minutes in you will have seen everything there is to see in the movie, and can safely fast-forward/skip to the credits. I did a rough breakdown by time, and came to rather amusing ~15% of time spent on active gameplay (that mostly includes walking and running away from fights), ~30% dialogues and cutscenes, and ~55% for the actual glitch setup (that will give you brain cancer). Should it be published? Yes, definitely! Was it entertaining? Not in the slightest.
Kurabupengin wrote:
Shouldn't the category be "game end glitch" to fit in with the others?
It should.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 8/6/2015 8:32 AM
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moozooh
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Joined: 8/4/2005
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I would say that ideally option #2 is where we should start with any respective system, gradually moving on to #1 as emulation quality improves. Some movies will probably stay permanently unverifiable due to non-deterministic routines, voltage sag incurring random lag frames, or something else that is impossible to control via input alone. However, because of the sluggish pace of emulation development and the purposes of publicity, it is reasonable that option #3 remain allowed for the reason both of us have already stated. This, as I understand, is pretty much where we're at with Sonic Advance (and probably some other movies? I don't have enough data on that). The wait for proper RNG seed at the start of that movie is indeed contentious (even if unavoidable), but seems to fall under the "inserting empty input" condition and could be seen as a delayed start... which it technically is. It boils down to whether we, at this point, want to be extremely pedantic with regards to run start point, or treat the start/finish timing as a sliding interval, closer to what realtime runners do (i.e. from pressing Start at title screen to movement stop, regardless of system uptime or the actual last input). The important part is that literally everything in that movie that demonstrates precision which separates TAS from non-TAS is, thankfully, deterministic and syncs perfectly, which is why the extra frames were inserted only during downtimes. The character does all the exact same things on the TV screen as what you can see in the emulator... good enough for virtually everyone aside of a few of us here. Modifications we're making are compensating for the emulator's deficiency, not for the author nor the TAS itself. At the same time, anything that would make the gameplay look differently or arrive at different in-game conclusions/timer results (when applicable) should definitely be unacceptable in my opinion, because at that point we would be tampering with the relevant content of the TAS, i.e. not actually verifying it at all (adaptation would be the right word for that). "Console-adapted", how's that for a new flag, eh? :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 8/6/2015 6:21 AM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
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Excellent improvement, Taco. I thought you'd left this game! Glad to see you're still interested in it; that realtime any% needs your love.
Aran Jaeger wrote:
Last but not least, I would like to mention the option of optimizing TAS categories for Super Metroid using the (as it seems, technically superior) PAL version instead of NTSC. I know that both versions could in principle be considered being different games and that it is likely that essentially more information and useful material is provided/existing for the NTSC version in general, which makes the optimization process for NTSC (by far) more comfortable, I guess (and I think further technical reasons exist). Nonetheless, although a video of a TAS that optimizes a category in PAL would probably be slower due to "artificial" 50hz-replay-reasons (i.e. the frames being shown with a lower frequency, such that it corresponds to the actual way the game would be seen when playing it), PAL could provide unseen strategies and new interesting solutions to obstacles in the game and it would highly likely be faster in terms needed frames than an equally optimized TAS for NTSC (of the same category of course).
People have tried. PAL only seems technically superior, but the timing works against players more than it helps. Testing results ended up pretty conclusive that overall PAL is both slower and clunkier. The most complete and optimized test to date is this submission by Saturn where he came to a conclusion that an NTSC run would be around 2.5 minutes faster in in-game time (and then proceeded making a run that ended up almost 3 minutes faster in-game and 5.5 minutes in realtime). PAL version might prove superior for some niche category, but for all the main categories so far there's no substantial argument for that... Area escape routes are close enough in time so that abusing some previously undiscovered area-specific glitch won't gain whole minutes or anything. You need something a lot bigger and PAL-exclusive for it to end up faster. That being said, you look like the person who could potentially come up with something on that level, so I'd be glad if you proved us wrong. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 8/6/2015 5:28 AM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away
feos wrote:
It's not about motivation, it's about having nothing else to do. Don't pay for internet for the next month and you will easily find time and interest in tasing.
Where's the upvote button? I demand an upvote button!
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 8/6/2015 1:06 AM
Post subject: Re: "Blame" the emulator, allow console verified lag changes
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moozooh
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Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away
ALAKTORN wrote:
A movie syncing on console with the same input should be considered verified, one that requires different input shouldn’t. Therefore this one shouldn’t.
While I certainly sympathize with this argument (it absolutely makes sense), having a small leeway (1) for emulators that are possibly years away from being sufficiently hardware-accurate (2) in non-gameplay places of the movie (fadeouts, cutscenes, level transitions) is definitely the way to go for the concept to remain around. Why? Because the concept of console verification came about as a proof that what we're doing here is not exploiting emulation bugs/inaccuracies nor hacking games; feeding pure input to the console is the only thing required to finish a TAS. In this respect the movies remain console-verified, but said leeway should remain in sane, non-controversial bounds. Three blank frames during a level transition should indeed be considered fine in that regard. Realistically—at least as far as I understand—at the moment there are at most three (?) platforms emulated well enough to not explicitly require such leeway: NES, SNES, and possibly Genesis (when done on Bizhawk or a compatible emulator); instead you just get runs that sync and runs that don't. And even then it doesn't seem to save those that do from occasional desync; I remember adelikat's Gradius TAS failing twice on AGDQ 2014 (but then again, it was made on an ancient FCEU version, so that might have been the reason).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/30/2015 3:19 AM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
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Location: Away
ugh reading the memorable IRC quotes topic is always a pain
I feel your pain, brother. Trust me, I do.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/30/2015 3:14 AM
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moozooh
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Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
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You have all the valid reasons to dislike it, but back then FFX was actually met with very significant acclaim, and although certain aspects of it were controversial as you said, others were considered quite innovative (the Sphere Grid, facial motion capture, etc.) and generally done to a very high standard. But when a company starts rehashing things, they become subject to a certain rule: you can't innovate the same thing twice, but you can make something already stale even more so the more you replicate it. It's exactly like inbreeding; bad aspects/ideas come to the surface and just stay there until a massive influx of fresh ideas is introduced. I think this was exactly what happened with the vast majority of Square Enix titles developed in-house.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/26/2015 9:08 PM
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moozooh
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A sub-hour run was published on SDA back in 2013, actually.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/25/2015 3:52 AM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
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Both Hotline Miami games have amazingly tasteful soundtracks (and everything else, to be fair) which deservedly ended up in my playlist.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/24/2015 4:12 PM
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moozooh
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Joined: 8/4/2005
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Impressive, though you can see how bosses themselves are by far the most mundane-looking part of the run.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/19/2015 10:46 PM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
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Well, this sure felt about twice its actual length.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/19/2015 11:19 AM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
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Ah! I thought you'd never ask. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/19/2015 11:17 AM
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moozooh
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That'd be cool actually.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/19/2015 12:00 AM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away
Gamer Maiden Sonia wrote:
I ended up filling some papers and getting into some agreements with the government, so now I get a stable monthly income even without working. It's as much as I'd earn if I were working as a translator, so everything is good.
Wow, uh, okay. Can I sign that agreement too? It sure sounds pretty good! By the way, is the local freelance market for En-Pt-En translations any good? I often take freelance jobs from one of the premier Russian translation companies when I have free time, and it works out to some decent payrolls: around $50 for an evening's worth of work, and that's going by the mid-2015 USD/RUB ratio which is ~1.5x higher than a year ago (I'm sure you know why). No idea what the supply/demand/average wage are where you live, but it could be something to consider in addition to your pension; languages enjoy practice after all.
Gamer Maiden Sonia wrote:
Wow! That's plenty of technical info about the game! You did a really good job on it. ^^
Thanks, but just as a sidenote, I wasn't the only contributor to it. I supplied maybe most of the descriptions and demonstrations that ended up as they currently are, but this is a collaborative effort between myself, JXQ, Kejardon, and several other SM players. (It's also about 6-7 years out of date).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 11:55 PM
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moozooh
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Being a fan of this game, I figured I should post my comments. This improvement is excellent. It actually made Bob's run, which was amazing for its time, look bad in certain parts where the hook could be used more aggressively but wasn't. Boss fights went generally better, but there were some tricks in Bob's version that I missed in this run (like the way he played with a frog in the first boss fight; I still remember that fondly). I also think—and this is perhaps the most important thing—that choosing the fastest path for a sightseeing run is, in a sense, missing the point of a sightseeing run. The path chosen isn't bad per se, but some of its stages are rather lame (in the "...is that it?" sense) and I would have preferred an optimized version of Bob's route instead as holding more potential for entertaining hook action. Maybe that will be something for the next version, I don't know. Thank you for the very entertaining movie and an excellent improvement to a very old entry... so old it apparently predates my register date. Wow, that's old.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 5:39 PM
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moozooh
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Super Pitfall, more like Super Pitifully Programmed. :v
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 3:43 PM
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moozooh
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Is there any setting that makes the screen go black perhaps? I suppose there could also be settings that affect sound volume and some other things to make it hard to even watch.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 7:23 AM
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moozooh
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I'm not sure about TASvifeos, but here on TASVideos you can check it for yourself whether you get talked about (it's a forum, so post history does persist).
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 6:55 AM
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moozooh
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Gamer Maiden Sonia wrote:
I don't know how things are for you guys, but in my country you have to successfully complete 300 hours of internship as a Portuguese/English teacher trainee in order to graduate (as well as passing in every discipline, of course).
That is so unnecessary rough. It actually sounds like the case we have with schools of education rather than linguistic faculties in particular; like, it can't be expected that a person who wants to study languages will necessary be teaching them to others. That being said, were you able to follow through on your translation career without the diploma, or did you end up with something else instead? I ended up forfeiting my copywriter's diploma back in 2007, never had a problem getting the jobs I wanted since then—mainly because none of them had to do with copywriting or anything else my would-be diploma would be able to demonstrate better than my actual experience. Fun fact: when I applied for a technical writer job (a job where you basically have to understand and explain stuff concisely) in 2011, I used this page as an example of what I was capable of. :)
Gamer Maiden Sonia wrote:
plus already knew how to read English (learned it from playing too many RPG's)
Ha! Diablo 2 it was in my case.
Gamer Maiden Sonia wrote:
If you're interested, here is my [URL=http://i.imgur.com/cNctfyP.png]school card/college report/whatever[/URL]. We call it "boletim" here.
Related to bulletin I assume. :) Looks better than mine actually.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 12:35 AM
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moozooh
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Have you tried contacting adelikat or Nach, i.e. people who run the site? :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 12:31 AM
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moozooh
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Is that usable elsewhere perhaps?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/18/2015 12:30 AM
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moozooh
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1) More often than not the address for a subpixel is right next (or within a dozen addresses away or so) to the address of a full pixel. 2) You can confirm it's a subpixel if the value corresponds to the rate of full pixel change when character moves, and if it always remains static when they don't (i.e. if the character's movement speed is 1.5 pixels per frame, then, if it's moving to the right, you should see the full pixel address's value oscillate between +1 and +2 and the subpixel's value adding something like +128 or +32768 on every frame—depending on the bit-size of the value). Keep in mind that some games, such as those based on Wario Land 4 engine (Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission), measure distance in quarter-pixels or other arbitrary units rather than treating subpixels as a proper fraction of a pixel. Additionally, while subpixels' values may be 16-bit in size, the actual precision could be way lower. For instance, Super Metroid's 16-bit-sized subpixel addresses only track 512 possible values for subpixels (which corresponds to 9 bits of information), while the popular hack Super Metroid Redesign makes use of the full range. It can be similar with 8-bit-sized addresses as well, with the actual precision being 4-bit, for instance, and thus only changing in the increments of 32.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 7/17/2015 11:56 PM
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moozooh
Experienced Forum User, Senior Moderator
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Although I've never studied linguistics proper, I've always been interested in the subject matter and broadened my knowledge of other languages, as well as English and my native Russian, bit by bit. This has even lead to me working as a freelancer translator/translation editor in the recent years, even though I started as a copywriter and moved on to working in IT/ITC. Unfortunately, I've yet to find motivation to learn a third language even though at this point it shouldn't even be too hard for me to pick up: I studied some German back in school, I know a ton of Latin roots, I've watched enough Japanese movies and anime to figure out what people are saying half the time without looking at subtitles, etc. :\ I think the reason is that, unlike English, there were never any pressing needs to study anything else: no non-English-speakers I would need to talk to, no untranslated content I would desperately want to consume, no desired job that would require extensive knowledge of a third language, no teacher/tutor that would demand timely results, and so on. I know for a fact that a lot of people here are at least tri-lingual and/or major language geeks (Bisqwit and Truncated to name a couple), so you're definitely not the only one interested in linguistics. :)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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