TASVideos

Posted: 1/17/2006 7:15 PM

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nitsuja

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Atma wrote:

also, can the spindash actually move you so fast that the game hasn't rendered the levels at that point to which you die from falling through the screen (like the airdash can)?

I'm not so sure that's really why you die from that. Where did you test it to get that effect? I don't think the levels need to render to do collision checks - I noticed Sonic getting stopped by walls that were at least 10 screens away. I think it's possible to combine the spin dash with air dash to go even faster, but when I tried once that the graphics started to totally glitch out as the camera zoomed back and forth across the level, then suddenly found Sonic standing at some apparently random location.

Atma wrote:

i actually disagree to an extent, it would be awesome to see just how fast you can get times happening due to weird programming errors like that.

If only the camera could keep up, then it would be great, but it probably takes something away from the entertainment if you can't even see the main character for 90% of the time and mostly just see pieces of the levels scrolling by. It would still be neat, though, and pretty difficult to think about how to actually optimize it.

Posted: 1/17/2006 6:46 PM

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nitsuja

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Truncated wrote:

That made all the difference from when I watched it the first time. Why does 2 seem to be the default?

Probably because, at least when some earlier version of VBA came out, many people had computers that couldn't handle drawing all the frames at full speed, and frame skip 2 is less likely to break flicker effects than 1.

Truncated wrote:

I think it's called insta-shield, and its point is to make Sonic invincible temporarily. At least that's the way it works in Sonic 3.

In Sonic Advance 2 and Sonic Advance 1, it just increases the attack radius slightly, and definitely doesn't offer any protection (if anything, it makes you more vulnerable than usual). The effect is pretty negligible when playing normally, but it helped shave some frames off here and there, mostly in boss fights.

Posted: 1/17/2006 8:41 AM
(Edited: 1/17/2006 7:12 PM)

Post subject: Re: Sonic Advance 1 / 2 anyone?

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nitsuja

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NintenDan wrote:

Oh, and I would say advance 3, but I don't think it'd be as great as these two for speedrunning. There are a few nifty tricks in there, but it's hard enough just to chose one combo for 20 levels.

Isn't it possible to switch character teams during the game? I think the fastest team for each individual level should be used, excluding teams with characters that aren't unlocked yet. EDIT: Oops, posted this in the wrong thread. Oh well, that was said in this thread initially.

Posted: 1/17/2006 8:37 AM

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nitsuja

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Do you have the uncorrupted save state also? (If not, you could make a new savestate at the same place that you got the uncorrupted picture from, and that would be better than not having it.)

Posted: 1/17/2006 8:30 AM

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nitsuja

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I took a brief look at Sonic Advance 1 (a game which apparently got many complaints for being too slow) since I was curious as to how different the game would be for a TAS... and found that it's quite broken compared to Sonic Advance 2, and a fastest-level-time run would be a complete glitch-fest, moreso than I thought before. Here is an example, the 1st act done in 16.95 seconds, and that's not seriously optimized at all (I couldn't see what was going on and didn't test very many options) so it could probably be a few seconds faster than that. Maybe it would be better for a movie of this game to have the restriction that it can't rev up the spin dash all the way. The air dash is similarly broken but it's probably fine because it's much harder to abuse to the same extent and harder to define any limit for it.

Posted: 1/17/2006 7:02 AM

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nitsuja

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Bag of Magic Food wrote:

But where's the option to turn off those pre-fetch messages?

Options->Video->Disable status messages (That message should probably be removed anyway, though... it's no longer useful.)

Posted: 1/16/2006 6:15 PM

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nitsuja

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SpiDeY wrote:

nitsuja, have you read my post?

Sorry, I didn't see your post before. What plugins are you using? Does it still crash if you change all of the plugins to something else? Also, try going to Options->Settings... and see if choosing "Pure Interpreter" from the General tab changes anything, or if enabling the two Compatibility Options in the Advanced Settings tab changes anything. (Also, it's a good idea to try re-downloading and installing the emulator to a new folder and test to see if it works there.)

Posted: 1/15/2006 9:07 PM

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nitsuja

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JXQ wrote:

What happens is that there is a preset number of minimum enemies allowed before it will dump more into the room. This number is 8 for the first couple rooms on 2-player, I believe. When that is reduced to 7, a random number of enemies enter the room, from 1 to 12 of them I've found so far. So, although enemies aren't killed as soon as they are spotted, you can still go for fastest time by staying ahead of this trend.

Does this mean (if going for fastest time) that you would want to manipulate only 1 enemy to appear then so there are fewer enemies to kill, or does it mean you would want to manipulate 12 enemies to appear so you can reach some kill quota faster? Also, about turbo mode, I'm not sure if you shouldn't use it. Although it requires entering a code, it is definitely a higher level of difficulty, and this wouldn't be the first game that is played (in a TAS) at a high level of difficulty that requires entering a code to choose. It doesn't make your characters go faster, right?

Posted: 1/15/2006 9:01 PM

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nitsuja

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It is packed with UPX as moozooh guessed. The .exe is compressed, and unpacks itself before running the actual program when you open it.

Posted: 1/15/2006 9:52 AM

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nitsuja

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Link_enfant wrote:

I got many codecs but I found that this timeattack needed the h264 codec, I found it and installed it but it still plays the video with the sound only.

Maybe you could try installing FFDShow and/or using a different media player to watch the movie.

Link_enfant wrote:

I think I'll try to watch this TAS with the emulator, what is the link for the last version please?

It's at top of the thread called "Download VBA here".

Posted: 1/15/2006 9:42 AM

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nitsuja

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So far I've redone all the levels through Ice Paradise 2. They all became at least 2 seconds faster thanks to some route refinements and some high precision tricks with the air dash that I didn't figure out until Techno Base 2. Hot Crater 1 became especially ridiculous - Sonic is offscreen for more than 25% of the time spent in the level. About the air dash trick: The trick is initiating (the first part of the double-tap of) an air dash before jumping such that the air dash happens so close to the ground that air dashes can be done in rapid succession without needing to double-tap for each one. Also, that can be used to achieve and preserve even faster-than-camera velocities regardless of boost mode status. EDIT: OK, it's finished, I think I'll submit this...

Posted: 1/15/2006 9:38 AM

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nitsuja

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Here is BoltR's run, whatever I downloaded of it at least.

Posted: 1/15/2006 8:26 AM

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nitsuja

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Make sure you record with "Volume Envelope Height Reading" turned off. It often causes desyncs exactly like the one you're describing, where it sometimes plays back differently (especially when fast-forwarding), making it nearly impossible to record anything reliably. It only affects certain games (such as Super Bomberman games, Mortal Kombat games, and apparently this game). It disables some sound effect features to turn it off, but there's not much choice for such games. I just checked BoltR's movie and he had that option off (and didn't encounter any desyncs that I know of). Also, he was using a different ROM than what you used - do you know what the difference between them is?

Posted: 1/15/2006 12:18 AM

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nitsuja

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ventuz wrote:

desync around frame 23000 with FCEU Nitsuja's v6 patch plays fine with 98.12, now we need FCEU that plays both 98.12 and Nitsuja's patch.

(Or you can just use 0.98.12 to play such movies.) To clarify, the different behaviour is because of fixes that were made after 0.98.12 to make the emulation more accurate, and I wasn't the one who made these changes, I only incorporated them from newer versions. I asked Phil about this but he didn't think it was necessary to make FCEU emulate differently on playback of movies made in older versions. EDIT: Oh, and... nice movie. Voting 'yes'.

Posted: 1/14/2006 11:43 PM

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nitsuja

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FODA wrote:

When you jump out of the water the vortex pulls everything else but ecco. How do you plan to reach the top of the screen if there's that trigger before reaching it?

The trigger also has a horizontal range. If you're too far to the left, it won't happen (maybe because you're not close enough to where the whirlpool is supposed to appear). I'll see if it's possible to hit the top just outside the trigger range and then vear to the side, although I'm kind of doubtful about it being possible without a password or cheat device or some other undiscovered bug. EDIT: It is possible to be at the very top of the screen when it happens, either by moving sideways from a normal jump or by using the float-into-air bug, but either way it always just does the normal scene and puts you back into the water. I tried getting the sonar map to appear at the moment it happened or in the air before landing from it, but that didn't do anything interesting either. (BTW, does anyone else think they must have been pretty lazy with the password system for AAAAAAAA to be a valid password that skips ahead a couple levels into the game? Or could it be there intentionally for people who couldn't figure out the intro level?)

Posted: 1/14/2006 11:29 PM

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nitsuja

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Burning Death wrote:

I knew that it's currently not possible to record a movie from a savegame. Again, my idea was to start a movie from reset, now get all 15 medals (normally without re-records) just to unlock expert mode. Now, while STILL recording your movie you start to do your 'real' re-recording movie and just forget about the first 3 times through the game which will not be shown in the fnal AVI version.

If the first 3 runthroughs are done not just to unlock things, but also to be good and entertaining, that doesn't prevent an AVI of just the last run from being made. I don't see why a movie that plays through a game multiple times (out of necessity) can't be split into multiple AVIs. Also, I've been wanting to add from-SRAM support and the ability to record reset for a while now, but (before that happens) there is still already a way to make a partial run starting with expert mode unlocked. Basically, unlock expert mode (and back up the SRAM/eeprom file at this point), then reset the game and start a from-snapshot movie on the first frame. The movie will behave exactly as the from-SRAM one would, and later when support for from-SRAM recording is implemented, the movie file can be hex-edited to start from that SRAM you saved instead of from snapshot.

Posted: 1/14/2006 6:37 AM

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nitsuja

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Saturn wrote:

And nitsuja, if it doesn't take too much effort or loss of any other feature I would gladly appreciate if you could add this 6 buttons (which as you said are not hardcoded anymore) to the hotkeys in the next version.

OK... Here is what I have of v8. It's mostly the same as v7 (no emulation or format changes), but: - those 6 turbo-enabling keys are back as hotkeys. You can configure them in hokey config->page 3, as well as 6 new turbo enablers for Start, Select, Left, Right, Up, and Down - the Read-Only toggle no longer "lies" to you if you started the movie in read-only mode - Record AVI doesn't suddenly stop working when a battle starts in Chrono Trigger (was fixed earlier but after v7) - the movie play dialog gives more of a warning about bad ROMs than before - when playing a movie that doesn't have extra sync/ROM info in it, the movie play dialog enables the default settings (to reduce desyncs from leaving left+right enabled on old movies, for example) (I'll replace v7 with it if there aren't any (new) problems reported with this.)

Posted: 1/13/2006 9:36 PM

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nitsuja

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You're probably playing the game too fast (emulator running at too high a speed) if you can't press both buttons at the same time reliably. If you pause the game, hold A+B, then unpause it (or hit the frame advance button) while still holding A+B, it should always work. If you don't want to do that, at least use a slower speed to make it easier. Another hint is to make the A and B buttons adjacent on the keyboard, and press halfway in-between the two keys to be more sure to hit them at the same time. (Also, if you assign A and B to the same keyboard key it should be guaranteed to work, but then you won't be able to press them individually so you'd have to change the key settings a lot.)

Posted: 1/13/2006 9:27 PM

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nitsuja

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Oh yeah, that. No, I certainly won't be attempting to implement that. (1) because it's tampering with the game itself (from the system's point of view) (and could easily be considered cheating) and (2) because I don't think the emulator is accurate enough to model the effects of CC correctly.

Posted: 1/13/2006 9:23 PM

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nitsuja

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Sorry, but what is CC?

Posted: 1/13/2006 5:39 PM

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nitsuja

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In Streets of Rage 3, the music changes seem to be pretty easy to hear at 50% and still possible to hear at 25% speed. I guess it becomes too choppy to make out with frame advance in Gens, so instead you can pause a lot at 25% or 50% speed (until/unless you find a pattern that you can follow with frame advance). It shouldn't really be that hard to get it to the music because after all you have as many re-records at your disposal as you want, so if you make a mistake where it's way off from the music you can immediately redo it until it sounds like it goes with the music.

Posted: 1/13/2006 9:27 AM

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nitsuja

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You don't need v6 for turbo, you know. Only for getting turbo on a joypad with that particular control scheme Saturn mentioned. And you can use Snes9x 1.43 Final or WIP to do that, especially if you're just messing around.

Posted: 1/13/2006 9:22 AM

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nitsuja

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mrmagic715 wrote:

I first loaded a ROM, then Movie play became available. So I laoded an .smv file (The Illusuions of Gaia one from the site) and the screen briefly says "Movie Replay", then just return to a black screen... am I doing something wrong?

What color was the text that showed up on the black screen? Was it white, yellow, or red? Your method sounds right to me, so I think either that game starts with a black screen and you didn't wait long enough for it to change, or your ROM is bad. (If the text is yellow or red that means the ROM is probably bad.)

Posted: 1/13/2006 9:02 AM

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nitsuja

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Kitsune wrote:

I would give comments, except before the run gets to "Mr. Pokémon", the game goes into a fight, where the emulator starts messing with the menus, and then doesn't do anything. Maybe my VBA re-recorder is out of date?

Actually this is still a problem with the current version. If it happens (and it's really likely to desync the first time you watch it), just play it again and there's a good chance it will be fine next time. (Reason for the problem as I understand it: There's some code I missed that messes with the clock time if there's no SRAM present, which can affect the randomness or timing of this game.)

Posted: 1/13/2006 8:52 AM

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nitsuja

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JXQ wrote:

I think the Genesis has some sound filter problems.

Something I noticed is that Gens has an option in the Sound menu called "YM2612 High Quality" that's off by default, but it makes some sounds and instruments sound much better (generally softer, and I think more accurate) when turned on. The Ecco "bump into wall" sound is drastically different with it, for instance. It could be unrelated, of course; listening to the same musical notes over and over in slow motion with/from intermittent skipping can get irritating regardless of the sound quality.

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