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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
nitsuja wrote:
when playback reaches a movie's end, it pauses and switches to recording instead of suddenly closing the movie, if you did any recording after the movie was opened
Can you turn that off if you want to?
I think there's no reason to disable it, because it only happens if you used the read-only toggle to switch to playback from recording. I can't think of any instances where I really wanted a movie to close while I was trying to watch what I just recorded, and it's not that much effort to choose "Stop Movie" if there is ever an exception.
Saturn wrote:
Regarding this version, I really hope that it won't have any additional desync problems compared to 1.43 with WIP timing.
Well, this new version hasn't been stress-tested for desyncs anywhere near as much as 1.43 WIP has by now, so as much as I'd like to say it's better because of all the possibly-desync-causing bugs that were fixed, it is quite likely that some problems have appeared that have gone unnoticed with the relative lack of testing so far. There will probably be a 1.52 to fix things like that.
hero of the day wrote:
Can anyone explain how to use the snes mouse in frame advance. Seems that (pc) mouse resets to the center of the screen after every advance of a frame.
What Snes9x does is let you change the relative position, and it keeps track of differences in relative position to give the illusion of controlling the absolute position. For TASing purposes, just ignore the PC mouse and judge your movements by the input display and where the SNES mouse appears when you load a savestate while the game is unpaused. Try to keep both the X and Y input display numbers between -128 and 128, pushing against either side before loading a savestate if necessary. Also, adding the game's real X and Y positions to memory watch helps a lot.
The reason it's so counterintuitive is because Snes9x does not know where the game's mouse cursor is. How can it convert your mouse position to movement if it doesn't know what it's moving?
That can be overcome with some extra configuration, but it wasn't high priority because this way (weird and unintuitive as it is) works well enough to make a TAS if you adjust to it, and for normal playing it doesn't make a difference.
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mmbossman wrote:
Now Chamale and I can be super excited to TAS on our Macs! (even though I do all of mine on my Dell laptop anyway). Thanks Nitsuja!
Well you should thank zones for the Mac port, I mostly did Windows stuff.
jaysmad wrote:
No more WIP1 timing?
Of course not, that's an early version of Snes9x 1.43 and it's already been brought up that there is no compatibility with Snes9x 1.43 smvs.
Baxter wrote:
"Tiny Toon Adventures: Wacky Sports Challenge" still has desync issues when recording a movie :(
The likely major culprit of desyncs (sound output/synchronization code) has still not been rewritten, so until someone figures out how to do it, don't expect drastically reduced desync issues.
zefiris wrote:
Would you please describe how are new controllers input supported by SMV format stored? We with Maximus will need this info `^^
The SMV page says how they are sized. They occur in this order after the other controller input for the frame. Here's what's inside them:
Mouse
{
int16 x
int16 y
int8 buttons // left:0x40, right:0x80, latch:0x10, latch2:0x20
}
Scope
{
int16 x
int16 y
int8 phys_buttons // fire:0x80, cursor:0x40, turbo:0x20, pause:0x10, offscreen:0x02
int8 next_buttons // like phys_buttons
}
Justifier
{
int16 x_player1
int16 x_player2
int16 y_player1
int16 y_player2
int8 buttons // trigger:0x80, start:0x20, select:0x08
int8 offscreen_player1 // 0 or 1
int8 offscreen_player2 // 0 or 1
}
int16's are little-endian and signed
Tompa wrote:
I've encouter an issue...
I gave Super Star Wars Return of the Jedi another shot, but the music is still off but I tried anyway so I did a short movie. During the recording I held B for a long while in order to boost with the landspeeder, when I played the movie the input showed that B was held old the time, but the game reacted as I was using turbo...
That game does something weird with its input that's emulated differently now, I don't know much about it yet. I would report those bugs here actually.
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For some reason I couldn't find that one. I assumed it required the gun since the game came packaged with it, but apparently not. Removed from the list.
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Here are some games I know were either impossible to record in or significantly broken or wrong in Snes9x 1.43:
- Battle Clash
- Bazooka Blitzkrieg
- Doomsday Warrior
- Kirby's Dream Land 3
- Mario and Wario
- Mario Paint
- Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge
- Super Scope 6
- Top Gear 3000 (but savestate support still iffy)
- X-Zone
- Yoshi's Safari
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laughing_gas wrote:
Too bad there's no backward compatibility with smvs but oh well.
Yeah, that would be pretty much impossible. I've been thinking of importing the non-emulation-related improvements into Snes9x 1.43+ for people who need to use it for compatibility with older movies, but until that happens I guess it's just more incentive to try the new version.
zidanax wrote:
Is it just me, or is the music actually more "off" than 1.43?
It's more the other way around, and we've gotten used to the pitch of everything being slightly wrong. The sound still has some issues and has not yet received the complete revamping it could have used, but it's still noticeably better in a lot of games. (try the Star Ocean intro...)
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Snes9x 1.51 is now available for download. Here's the announcement post, and so far I've seen working mirrors here and here and here.
Some important changes as far as TASing is affected are:
lots of accuracy improvements and bugfixes since 1.43 (and 1.5 for that matter)
mouse, superscope, justifier, and reset recording are supported
"bulletproof playback": loading an inconsistent state during playback no longer causes desync, unlike most other re-recording emulators
when playback reaches a movie's end, it pauses and switches to recording instead of suddenly closing the movie, if you did any recording after the movie was opened
option to disable the prevention of loading a savestate from a different movie, and an option to automatically delete leftover input data at the end of the movie file
Win32: cheat search now includes SRAM/SuperFX RAM (for instance, this is the only place Yoshi's speed is stored in Yoshi's Island), and watches can be saved/loaded and labeled
Win32: background input option, including an option for hotkeys (now with joystick support) to work in the background too
Win32: an optional lag indicator thing
See changes.txt in the download for a full list of changes, there are lots of them. For example, Windows users will be glad to see that use of the Windows registry is abolished from Snes9x, replaced by a snes9x.cfg text file. And there are frills like HQ2X and maybe some sort of netplay. And as already mentioned, many of the changes are accuracy improvements.
Anyone wondering how the movie format has changed should look at the SMV description page again.
UPDATE: A slight problem has been found with the sound pitch being too low in this version, but there is an easy fix. To fix the problem, set FixFrequency=FALSE in the [Sound] section of your snes9x.cfg file.
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ventuz wrote:
I think there's a problem, I could not get this certain address showing any digit.
*edit - wait.. I used BGB emu, it's showing DE80 for game frames instead and it worked on memory watcher, something wrong with VBA's cheat searcher.
Those are two different addresses you're looking at. You're watching 00:CE80 in the left window, and 01:CE80 in the right window.
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For the longest time I thought it was spelled "biggame" too, but it's more like "bi-game".
I'm too lazy to list reasons right now but here are some top-of-the-head suggestions to shoot down:
- Anything + Pinball
- Battle of Olympus + Zelda II
- Bionic Commando + Hitler no Fukkatsu (or not)
- Contra + Double Dragon 2
- Gimmick + Rescue Ranges
- Kirby's Avalanche + Tetris Attack
- Lolo-type games?
- McKids + Doki Doki Panic
- Super Mario Kart + Super Off Road
- Umihara Kawase + Wild Guns
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I'm posting a WIP, unfortunately the same thing I had a few weeks ago. If only I could find 1 more frame in 1-1, that level would instantly become 5 frames faster, possibly saving time later too. I believe it's possible and I have been able to do the first half of the level faster, but so far I've always lost more time than I gained from increased lag later in the level. The only "big" improvement here is the unusual strategy in 1-2, which can also be used in 8-2 to a lesser extent.
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I think curiosity is a much better motivator to have than pride or ego. e.g. "I can't wait to see how cool this level can look or how much faster it can go" instead of "I don't really care but I hope someone praises me for it".
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mmbossman wrote:
Considering there was almost a civil war here about whether a run without swastikas should obsolete a movie with swastikas, I can't image trying to get anyone to agree on something that's so arbitrary and subjective.
How about a "no damage" classification? That can be defined unambiguously and would certainly make for a different run, probably different enough to exist separately like 100% runs do.
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Snes9x 1.502 can record it, but beware it's sort of a pre-release version that's buggy all-around and missing features where the superscope is concerned. There's no official/accepted release with peripheral recording yet.
Yoshi's Safari was of course the first Super Scope game I tested, and I think it could make a great TAS. Important hints:
- It's not entirely a rail game. Using player 2 gives you limited control of Yoshi, which can be used to save time.
- You can completely avoid waiting for the gun to cool down simply by not using the autofire switch on the gun. Manually firing lets you shoot faster and doesn't heat it up.
- It might be possible to save time with damage boosting.
- At least one boss glitches out and skips time-wasting sequences if you keep firing faster than normally possible.
- The game has a hard mode accessible from the start (LRXYStart at title screen), which is good.
- Getting 100% kills (that are on whatever path you take) is not overly easy, which is also good. There's not as much down-time as you'd think. I think the close-as-possible approach looks best (unless it lags), but sometimes you have no choice.
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comicalflop wrote:
2 out of the 4 courses are drive in circles.
I would say Rainbow Road counts as well, being a slight variation on the same trick used in the first two races.
comicalflop wrote:
... further shows that a full run of all 16 courses in one go shows all of the courses at their best, even the 4 anti-climactic ones, in a very smooth flow that leaves audiences with plenty of variation ...
If you're looking for a reason to continue, there it is.
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EDIT:
This made me think it's sad an all-cups run would also have to end so anticlimactically. Out of 4 races, 3 of them are essentially "drive around in circles at the start to win", and the most impressive trick was on the race that didn't let you do that. I can't decide what outweighs what here (short and surprising and impressive + repetitive and low on action and apparently low technical quality). I think there's better to be had from this game in an all-cups run, but SNES SMK still beats it.
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I think there are many reasons to not support Snes9xw 1.502: It's buggy all-around despite having more accurate timing, its movies aren't compatible with anything else, and the next version (1.51) is a lot more stable (and even more accurate), and seems to be already done and hopefully won't take too much longer to finish the documentation/etc. and release it.
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AQwertyZ wrote:
Since it seems to me that camera angles only affect entertainment and not speed (with the exception of lag)
This is probably still not true. For one thing, every time the camera turns while some direction is being held, the chance of losing frames is quite high because the analog stick must be rotated with extreme precision to keep Mario moving in a perfectly straight line. And if the number of angles Mario can move at is greater than the number of angles the game can recognize the control stick to be at (which I think is true), one way to take advantage of that extra precision as much as possible (to save a few frames here and there) is with perfect control of the camera. The fastest theoretically possible run may need to change the camera angle and distance and mode in very specific ways, numerous times, even where there is no lag.
I'm not suggesting Rikku is or should be looking for such optimizations to that extent, but I doubt speed is completely unaffected by most camera-related decisions.
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mmbossman wrote:
("Unconscious" due to high post count and movies rated)
Huh? Thought of in a very specific way I suppose you could interpret "unconscious" to mean "highly skilled" or "natural-born", but usually it means things like "not being awake", "not paying attention", "not caring", "lacking mental processes", etc. "Unconscious due to high post count" sounds like a way to explain why someone is in a coma.
Also, I'm no operator. And I am probably conscious at the time of this writing.
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Dammit wrote:
Edit: Here is a redo of the first two parts of 1-2, done faster and inelegantly frankensteined onto nitsuja's smv.
I'll look at it later, but I think you should try to beat my 1-1 instead of simply using it. I don't mind if you use it, but it's better to be more sure that what you go with is optimal.
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What things are you planning to buy later in the game?
Dammit wrote:
I don't think it will be feasible to skip the ostrich
It's definitely possible, and might save time, so it should be tested at least until getting the puck. Which you should try power-throwing more, by the way.
-The monsters are so simple and predictable, I suspect this game will be splice-friendly. But, I hate splicing.
I wouldn't count on it being splice-friendly... I think it very likely isn't.
Question: how do you convert a starts-from-reset movie to a starts-from-savestate movie? For sharing.
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In case I said this too indirectly: I think there should be no details link when there are no ratings. I wasn't suggesting those little problems be fixed individually.
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EDIT: fixed now, disregard this.
Now that I can see the ratings of others, I can't seem to access my own.
rating.exe wrote:
Fatal error: Call to undefined function RedirectTo() in /home/WWW/wikisites/nesvideos-site/doc/rating.php on line 664
(It's likely something temporary, but I have no way of knowing it's not some problem specific to my username.)
Also, non-rating users have a "Details..." link that is missing a newline or space before it and sometimes leads to a "User not found" page.
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There has always been a disclaimer on the rating page that says "Ratings are not anonymous", so everyone who has given ratings has already accepted that their ratings may become public. If all ratings were made public this instant, I think I would have no right to complain that I should have been given a choice about it. Moreover, arguments that people will rate less accurately because of the change don't make much sense, because people already are giving ratings as if their ratings are publically available... unless they didn't bother to read the rating guidelines, in which case they probably wouldn't be paying enough attention to notice anything change either.
