Anyway, without an example your point is rather moot. Saying this run has errors without naming them is like saying nothing at all. Nothing useful, that is.
And it also doesn't help anything.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
From my very limited* experience, I must say that Atari games are so excrutiatingly simple that they are almost unexploitable to tool-assistance in a sense that most NES games are. Also, as the hardware doesn't allow the games to have intricated code, most of them are based around repetition of similar actions involving reaction speed, reflex and other primitive aspects of gameplay, thus having little merit for TASing (the examples of such games: [1], [2], [3], [4]; now imagine something inherently more repetitive and ugly, and you'll see the basic picture). Of course, I could be proven wrong, but not by much; I can see some of the runs being somewhat entertaining to watch as long as they're short and comparatively complex, but I still can't see more than 2-3 of those examples coming (someone mentioned Joust as being one of them).
But I should say, there definitely are other platforms that need attention, and it seems that we have a near-complete rerecord capabilities support in the respective emulators.
* — The main reason for it being so limited is that I can't like these games. The only one of them that held my attention for more than an hour was Pitfall — it was a hidden game on the cartridge of Genesis Pitfall: The Mayan Adventure, and I was really bored at that point.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
It had to be Top-13 (kinda) to contain everything.
1. Killing the space pirate guardian with a speed echo and having six Super Missile drops from it — Super Metroid RBO run by Saturn. Things like this just can't happen, ever.
2. Carnival Night Zone — Sonic 3 & Knuckles run by Nitsuja. Jawdropping experience.
3. Continuous screen wrapping — Excitebike by Superninja. It has its high rating for a reason. :)
4. Letter scribing — Gradius run by Adelikat. Where else would I see such a thing done that beautifully.
5. Fight with Goro — Mortal Kombat 4 run by Xyphys. I knew it would happen, but that fact didn't make it any less awesome.
6. Zipping through all the walls as Maxim — Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance by pirate_sephiroth.
7. Chaos fight — Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow by pirate_sephiroth.
8. Long zipping in Wily 3 — Rockman run by Bisqwit and FinalFighter. Not counting what is going on due to the glitch itself, it happens to match the music so good that it becomes rather difficult to forget it.
9. Post-boss antics — Ninja Gaiden 2 run by Scumtron.
10. Umm… the moment where he beats the game, I guess — King's Bounty by Aqfaq. He does it in a moment, and that is its greatest moment.
Honorable mentions (runs that have too many awesome moments in them to choose anything certain):
1. Enemies falling down: steadily, willingly, furiously — Golden Axe run by Neofix. Later versions by Trazz have more of the entertainment sacrificed for speed, but this, IMO, is unrivaled in its style.
2. Tons of awesome speed tricks — Super Metroid 100% run by JXQ.
3. Almost everything from the beginning to the very end — Altered Beast run by Dan. The game is so hilarious that it's hard to think of anything boring in that run.
Also, as a bonus: Top-3 NON-TAS moments!
1. Any example of an uncapped acceleration — Half-Life 2 speedrun by hl2dq team. Especially on that highway.
2. Skipping the long portal preparing scene — Half-Life by Spider-Waffle. However, skipping that much in that game is almost heroic.
3. Saving the animals — Super Metroid any% speedrun by Hotarubi. Totally made my day.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Well, 2D games are nearing extinction anyway. In one or two years, all games will be 3D, and textured polygons will reign supreme.
This is precisely as valid as if it was said ten years ago, when games started supporting Voodoo chip for 3D acceleration, which gave a good bump to the industry. Funny thing, the situation hasn't changed drastically since then, although the balance was additionally shifted in 1999 with the invention of GeForce256 supporting hardware T&L, and then again in 2001, when the graphics cards (notably GeForce 3) started supporting shaders. But I still see a lot of 2D games being produced since then even though everything that was required to obsolete them happened six years ago.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
IMO: attacking each other helped this pathetic (for speedrunning) game be nominally entertaining. Also, having more than this one run for this game is a crime against humanity.
Voting yes.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Granted there are no easy answers, but "what if's" are not a reason to do nothing.
Instead of doing "nothing", it's better to do "something" which would be a bigger bother for both viewers and encoders, correct? It's impossible to care about everything, this is an excessive measure.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Come on, this was discussed many times already. The strongest argument against it is that you can't prevent the videos from "popping up" anyway since it is ridiculously easy to do a fresh encoding of the emulator output, while a watermark would just distract and/or annoy the regular audience.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
different quality releases won't really help here due to the usage of BitTorrent for distribution. There'd probably be seeding trouble and lower download rates when the available seeders are split between different quality avis.
We can use archive.org for direct links as SDA does, too, but nothing can match BT's speed when there are a couple of Swedes with 100 mbit upload rate. :D
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
SDA offers various sizes mainly because there's both no way to satisfy everyone with just one encode and no way of doing a manual encode, either.
However, you can do the latter with TAS movies if you want to, and with very little trouble. If you can't or don't want to, the quality/size ratio can hardly be better with TASVideos encodes. Not to mention that every SDA encode is bloated so much that it's almost painful to try to stuff some of the high/insane quality runs onto DVD+Rs.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Umm, Upthorn, the thing is that NecroVMX watches even the runs he doesn't like and votes "no" on them if they have glitches he doesn't like. Apparently, getting inside a wall in this game sucks, and exploiting numerous glitches in your S3&K run doesn't. Go figure.
(The moral of the story: don't argue with NecroVMX, it's pointless.)
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Since the Super Metroid Tricks page is asking for discussions on various routes, I will post a route that I developed and believe to be the fastest route for an any% run aiming for real time. I have done quite a bit of testing and have some good experience TASing this game. My route idea can be found here http://img441.imageshack.us/my.php?image=herootdmetroidroutewv0.jpg.
The image shows my intended route and the damage data for all the bosses as well.
That's a very interesting route, especially considering there's so little backtracking involved. And I really didn't hope for such a quick response for that suggestion I put up on the TODO, so it was a pleasant surprise as well. :D
hero of the day wrote:
Since this aims for real time, there are some less obvious choices that I made.
I should say, the choices are indeed surprising, especially such as skipping both Space Jump and HJ boots. That will really slow you down in vertical and some horizontal rooms, and I'm not sure not taking the Space Jump is going to compensate it. Come to think of it, you'll gain about 20 seconds with nearly a half of it lost on doing a gravity jump to get to the exit from Draygon's room, then a bit more later in Maridia, then a bit more for not being able to space boost in the first Crateria room to the left of the ship (which would also allow for going through the bomb-block blockade painlessly without having to stop and recharge), then a bit more in the third metroid room and Tourian eyedoor room. Summed together, I see it about as much as 20 seconds, if not more.
Anyhow, the setting of items, their order and methods of traversing the areas remind me pretty much of Saturn's RBO run or a low% one. The fact that you won't be using the fastest known methods to dispose of Phantoon, Ridley and Mother Brain due to the lack of all the required items, coupled with noticeably slower travelling is sure a bit daunting, and this of course will have its impact on the entertainment value, although less backtracking and waiting for door transitions/item acquisition fanfares might make up for that.
hero of the day wrote:
I know Saturn is working on an any% improvement currently, and it will surley be one of the finest runs ever made, but I know his goal is to get the in game timer as low as possible. I would like to see how low the real time can get, which is why I made this route.
Since you said you had some good experience TASing this game, and already made most of the tests and route planning, I'll ask you: how much time will it take you to make this run? As we know, Saturn will be away for his duties for the whole next year, and he'll still need to make about 2/3 of his run after he returns. As we also know, his route will be faster in-game time (which is prevalent in the case with Super Metroid, due to numerous reasons) and more entertaining for the same reasons. You have enough time to make this run and have it published until then, which is also twice as good since having such an outdated run for one of the most popular and TAS-happy games doesn't make any good for the site. So will you do it?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
So when she's facing left, her "front foot" is the left foot? And when facing right the front foot is right foor? And if they're tied up somehow, does it mean that when running right I have to press B (on SNES) everytime her right foot "front foot" is touching the ground?
Yes. Yes, right foot. Yes, when going right. Yes, when touching the ground. Yes, you may want to press it a bit beforehand to catch the right moment. :)
Watch JXQ's run with input display on, and slow it down as he's about to charge a spark in short distance, if that helps.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
You can try shortening the distance further if you watch Samus's running animation closely: the special frames are closely tied to it and thus only occur when her "front foot" is touching the ground.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I mean exactly one-button (or button combination) save to/load from a slot. I shuffle through my states very often, since I'm using four at a time while TASing (one at a safe spot, one at the beginning of a complex sequence, two more for general purposes — testing variations in the span of several frames). Of course, it would be much longer for me to pick a slot, and then use it — especially if I alternate between them a lot.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Hmm, yes, you're right.
In addition to that, here's my personal wishlist for the next version:
1) there should be separate hotkeys for different savestate slots (it's MUCH handier to load them with one buttonpress each, not to switch between them each time);
2) all the hotkeys including save/load states should be freely configurable — and in one menu, not scattered across 3-4 different ones;
3) frame advance should ideally work exactly like in snes9x (since it's pretty much perfect in there), and it shouldn't mess up the graphics at all;
4) how about a more minimalistic GUI as a separate option? I sure think many people will be happy about it.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
