Posts for nitsuja


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OK, I finally got around to giving this a try. I couldn't make all the changes Phil suggested, but here are the changes I made: -Fixed bug causing playback desyncs and differences between Blip's and Phil's Patched FCEU (I think this should also fix the "FCEU sometimes changes a valid savestate to another savestate that resets the game" bug, but I've never seen that bug happen, so I'm not sure) -Fixed bug preventing the auto-fire keys from working -Integrated all changes/fixes of FCEU version 0.98.13 -Integrated all mapper and board additions and fixes of the fceu-mm project -Incorporated a much better default palette -Added Record from Start (power-on + wram clear) as default recording option (and previous versions can still play it) -Added "Input Display" (activated by a hotkey, like the frame counter) -Added "Toggle Read-Only" hotkey for switching movie playback/recording without reloading -Made frame advance repeat after a delay if you hold it down -Made frame advance pause the game if pressed while it's unpaused -Made loading a save state show its graphics immediately even if paused -Fixed bug that allowed key-up events to activate hotkeys when 2 hotkeys had different modifiers -Stopped emulator from using 100% CPU power when left paused in the background for a while -Added a warning to help catch if a save state becomes corrupted -Prevented exiting movie play dialog while movie browse window is still open -Worked around bug in DirectInput that prevented the Pause/Break key from working as a hotkey -Changed the default key setup (it's still configurable and your old settings won't be erased) Compatibility with version 0.98.12(blip) is maintained in almost all cases, which means that each version can play movies made in the other version (so you can watch previous movies with input display on, for example, and the process of verifying movies made with this should not change).
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Have you tried changing your graphics plugin? The default is glN64, and it's possible that your graphics card doesn't handle OpenGL properly compared to DirectX. (Go to Options->Settings... and change the Graphics Plugin to Jabo's D3D or something else.)
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Bisqwit wrote:
I'd like to get more information on this error. It works for me every time I download the file(s) with wget. Any suspicious headers, error messages, ..? File content in wrong format (which format)? Happens on which browser(s)?
OK, I tried some more and here are the results: - On Internet Explore, it always downloads an invalid zip. It saves it with a filename like this: foda-kickmaster[1].fcm.zip - On Mozilla browsers, if I right-click and choose save as, it downloads an invalid zip with a filename like this: foda-kickmaster.zip - On Mozilla browsers, if I left-click instead, it downloads a valid zip file with a filename like this: foda-kickmaster.fcm.zip - No error messages or warnings in any case - I ran a file-compare of the two zip files in a hex editing program, and it did not find any significant similarities between the two files (no 32 consecutive bytes in one zip were the same as any 32 consecutive bytes in the other) - All of the invalid zip files I get by any means are exactly identical in all of their bytes - The invalid zip file is some number of bytes smaller than the valid zip file (but not always the same number, depending on the movie)
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megaman wrote:
Isn't the improved version supposed to play both?
Yes, but if the movie wasn't made with the improved version then you need to tell it which type it's trying to play (by checking or unchecking the box that says "Use WIP Timing" in the movie play dialog, and you probably also need to uncheck "Allow Left+Right" for older movies). That's because older movie files don't store which version they were made with or any of the other settings, so for those movies it is impossible for the emulator to detect what settings to use without you telling it. You can see if you need to set the options manually because it will not say "LOADED FROM MOVIE" in the movie play dialog if you do.
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Yes, it's also happening for me. In fact, I downloaded the Super Demo World movie file twice and got a different zip file each time. One of them is 27,756 bytes, and the other one is 27,960 bytes. The 27,756 byte one is not valid, and that is the one that I get most of the time, but very occasionally I end up getting the 27,960 byte one, which works. Maybe Bisqwit has some idea of what's wrong with downloading movie files from his site? I have never had this problem before, but now it is happening for ALL of the movie file downloads I try.
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Really, it would be easy for you to avoid the problem by always leaving the game paused. That's what almost everyone else does, anyway... It is a bug somewhere. Your last description helps, although I have no idea what in the code could make it happen, and apparently my computer isn't fast enough to reproduce it. But, it does happen when I bring up a menu while unpaused in slow motion and wait a while with the menu up, so at least I can go by that in trying to fix it, and hope it's related. You don't need it to be fixed to finish what you're doing with VBA, though. BTW, what happens when you load the same state again, does it always keep zooming past those frames even if you load it multiple times? And does it happen at speeds other than 6%?
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xebra wrote:
For some reason, in the portion where Mario's head pops into view, just after the starting logo, my FPS drops to 3-4. Also, in the opening sequence, the Princess now has three sets of lips and an extra eye on her cheek.
Funny, I saw this exact same thing happen... 5 years ago. You must be using some really outdated graphics plugin and/or hardware. (Well, I don't know, it could be a bad ROM or something else, too.)
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Wow, that was fast. And Bowser 2 was great.
spezzafer wrote:
the stair climbing is much faster in both places now
Here's a video of another way to get between the two staircases: www.savefile.com/files/8677360. (From start, so load a save state from your movie from before the room with the first long staircase, in read-only mode of course.) It's 24 frames faster, and I'm sure it can be done even faster with more optimal jumping up the big steps (at a better angle and/or with side/triple/wall jumps).
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Atma wrote:
Still, it looks like it probably shouldn't lag there depending on what angle you use.
Yes - Spezzafer used a much different camera angle. Maybe it's boring to look at the ground to reduce lag, though. Spezzafer: Whenever you reach the entrance to Bowser 3, could you post a WIP then (in addition to whenever else you would do so, if you wouldn't have already)? It would suck if some faster way up there is found after you go through all the trouble of the Bowser 3 level.
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Maza wrote:
Nope, any of your pointers didn't help me out, nitsuja.
(Even the one about using pause and frame advance instead of slow motion?) Does it only happen when you're recording a movie? How long does it take to load a save state - Is there a short pause when you hit the load button, and then it skips a bunch of frames? Loading should be pretty much instantaneous. What does the game sound like (low-pitched, skipping, crackling, etc.) when playing in slow motion? Does that change right after you load a save state?
Maza wrote:
If you could see my keyboard, you could definitely tell it's not fast-repeating ;D
That doesn't make any sense at all to me...
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Is your v15 in a different folder than your v10? It's probably happening because your settings are different, not because they are different versions. There's no difference between v10 and v15 related to this. Make sure these options are enabled (in v15): Options->Sound->On (or Mute, but not Off) Options->Speed->Accurate Emulation Speed Also make sure your Fast-Forward key isn't set to something you always press when you load a save state, and make sure you are not using the menu to do things. Maybe fiddling with Speed->Process Priority will help, too, but that probably doesn't matter. If that still doesn't work, let me know what % speed your are using for slow motion, what buttons you are using for saving/loading, and what system you are running. BTW, you should always pause the emulator when saving or loading a save state. On any emulator it will affect the quality of the TAS if you don't do that. And it will definitely make the problem not happen if you just use pause and frame advance...
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Uh, could you give part of that list or something? The only thing I know of that this can't emulate that PJ64 can is Blast Corps, and both PJ64 and 1964 emulate that game incorrectly anyway. And graphics/sound issues are shared across all these emulators because the plugins are shared. The GUI is annoying, but that doesn't seem like what you mean...
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The newest ASQ palette (called "RealityB") makes the sky in Super Mario Bros extremely purple compared to any of the other palettes, and gives everything a weird tint. (And I checked its sky color and found it has higher red-to-blue and red-to-green ratios than the others, so don't say it's just my monitor.)
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That movie works for me on that version of the emulator. Here are the relevant MD5 checksums:
snes9x.exe:         a5aa04bc7d110e02a2de8dee5f87e04a
Sparkster (U).smv:  b207b415c6f012af6120ce4ff77777c4
EDIT: Actually, it looks like the zip file of the movie that is hosted on the site is corrupted. It should expand to an about 140 kb file. Try this movie file: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/284/ EDIT2: Hmm, it seems that many other submissions are doing this as well - they download as invalid zip files. It could be that it only fails in MSIE, though, or it's a browser cache thing...
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FODA wrote:
Mupen 64 0.5.0 (alpha 4)
Alpha 4? Version 8 is out by now, switch to that first.
FODA wrote:
video plugin: glN64 v0.4.1
glN64 can't handle the 2D graphics of this game. Switch the Video Plugin to "Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6" in the Settings. Actually, any of Jabo's plugins seem to work for this, including the OpenGL ones, and Rice plugins newer than 5.4 will also work.
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(How would it help for anything to be the same if it even desyncs for the person who made it?) It sounds like the desync got into the movie, so changing playing settings won't help. For future reference: There are only 3 things I know of that can cause a recording desync with the already-cautious settings you were using: 1) Making a save state, then re-recording from before that save state, then playing the movie in read-only and loading that save state, then re-recording from there. (This will almost certainly cause a desync in any re-recording emulator, even ones with "bullet-proof" re-recording.) 2.) Some games have certain frames where your input from the frame before it gets screwed up if you load a state on that frame. I have no idea why, but it might be more likely to happen when there's a lot going on graphically, and it might be possible to avoid it (depending on the game) by only saving on even frames or only saving on odd frames. 3.) Changing settings partway through making the movie is likely to cause a desync depending on which settings you change. This includes cheats. Anyway, the best (general-purpose) way to deal with desyncs is to watch each segment of your movie after you record it. It's a good idea to do that anyway in case you catch a regular mistake you made before it would require redoing a bunch of stuff to fix. EDIT: I tried actually watching your 1-player movie, and it went all the way to the ending just fine. But, I had the 2-lancelots cheat code on - maybe you also had that on when making part of the movie? EDIT2: Nope, actually, I can't get it to desync at all either way. Maybe someone is using a different emulator version?
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I'm pretty sure I'll vote yes when I finish watching it. Will this hold the new record for longest submission text?
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Huh? It'd probably be very hard to hex edit GPU/SPU dumps to do anything. Except maybe you could remove segments to make the movie skip ahead faster, like cutting out the middle of an AVI, or other things like that. I think it would be way more trouble than anyone is willing to go to to figure out how to do it, considering how huge the files are. Anyway, even if a PSX emulator recorded input, in most cases the only one who would be willing to verify and encode the movie is the one who made it, so you'd still be in the same situation that people would only be able to watch the AVI's, not view them in an emulator.
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FODA wrote:
this game didn't work very well on my copy of mupen64.
Could you give more details? (What it does wrong and what plugins you're using, at least.)
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BTW, I think M64 files are at least tentatively publishable now, so it should be possible to submit this movie whenever it is finished.
Bag of Magic Food wrote:
I would complain that Mario doesn't go straight enough in some places, but I guess that there are some situations in which you can't change your angle very fast.
It does look like the swimming could be smoother (for instance I saw Mario bump into the wall he was swimming over, and apparently not turn as early as possible going around the other corners). It's hard to tell if the pattern of button presses used for swimming gives optimal movement speed (I haven't checked). I noticed that elsewhere (on land) the stick is almost never at 100% in either axis, but it could be that it doesn't make any difference in this game. Turning on land can't be done too fast or Mario will skid in preparation for a sideflip.
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Maybe it's just me, but it looks like there is still more lag when approaching the sub (before exiting the tunnel) than in that other video Atma posted a couple pages back. Also, I noticed your movie has no author/description info, and was about to bug you to change it when I realized there's no way to change it in the emulator, so... it's now possible for you to change it in the playback dialog, switch to v8 to do so. If you don't, the author will display as "(too lazy to type name)" for everyone that views it.
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New version: v8 Changes since v6: - fixed Recent ROMs menu - fixed Open command to work consistently when a ROM is already running - fixed hotkey configuration save alignment bug - fixed display of save slot numbers - fixed a frame advance problem some people were having - fixed a possible race condition on starting recording from start - added new hotkeys to configure: toggle read-only, play movie, record movie, stop playing/recording movie - added checkmarks for Pause and Read-Only menu items to show their current states - made it possible to change the author and description info from the movie playback dialog (must re-record to save it) - made it work normally to assign spacebar to a hotkey - made hotkeys actually show up in the menus, as the correct keys even after you've configured them - made the ROM list auto-populate when you Open a ROM, for people who wouldn't bother setting their ROM directories - made it less likely that your mupen64.ini file will become corrupted on exiting the emulator - made fast-forward a little faster - changed input display of analog sticks to show numbers, with 99 being the maximum
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I think you guys are talking about 3 different things here (and thus misunderstanding each other and arguing about it). There's comparing to the SDA run as in "this is better than that", which is bad/pointless, there's comparing to the SDA run as in "this is more entertaining than that", which is fine but it's personal opinion, and there's comparing to the SDA run by analyzing both runs and comparing parts of them so as to find ways to improve this run, which is also fine and even helpful.
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Saturn wrote:
Hmmm... almost 3 minutes faster after 25 min sounds interesting. Could you upload the movie somewhere?
Uh, ok, I put it there: http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/281/ One mistake is using autofire to get past some dialogs. You can actually advance dialogs faster in real-time by letting go of and then pressing and holding the button while the text is scrolling, you can see the difference because the little note icon won't have time to appear. The biggest mistake for a TAS here is that the luck manipulation is not very good, so the bosses take more hits to kill than they should. There's also minor clumsiness of movement sometimes and inconsistencies like forgetting to dash attack into doors in the first dungeon and killing the first 3 enemies with a suboptimal path. (Getting killed at the end was just to see if it's faster, but it turned out to be slower, at least the way I did it.) I would be aiming for real-time, because in this case I think it is more entertaining to do so, and I don't see the point of sacrificing both real time and entertainment just to make the in-game timer lower. (Even for competition purposes, real-time would have to be taken into account anyway if you don't want to ignore the amount of time that the final battle takes, and it's possible to go through the entire game without seeing the in-game timer.)
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Pretty neat (the 2p run so far), considering it's just about as un-publishable as possible (you know, because of rules and such). But I think I would rather see the 2 characters be different, for more variety. And I think an Arthur+Percival run would actually stand a good chance of beating the current 1-player submission's time (and entertainment factor), so those are what I'd go with... There is only one thing I've found that Lancelot does a clearly superior job at compared to the other characters, and that one thing is wobbling. Arthur, on the other hand, can match Percival's dashing speed so nearly (using repeated back-jump-attacks) that he won't be a handicap in terms of overall movement speed, and he should deal out more damage than Lancelot would as well (although his power attack is a bit slow to execute). Also, probably an important thing to do for both speed and entertainment is to find some way to juggle around the enemies without knocking them down (which the current Percival-alone run doesn't always do so well at).