Posts for nitsuja


Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Maybe the zip file is throwing it off somehow? Try unzipping it and running that instead of running the zipped ROM. As far as I can tell, our setups are pretty identical besides that. Did you change any options in the settings dialog? And while this shouldn't matter, which plugins are you using? And what/where is the desync you're encountering?
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Mutation would probably get better results if duplicating or removing a frame of input were possible things it could do in addition to simply changing the input of existing frames, because often that's the only thing that can be done to improve a sequence of input, and the likelihood of doing one of those things by randomly flipping bits can be very low. (Removing could duplicate the last frame to keep the input stream the same length, if that is necessary.) Also, crossover might work if something very smart is done about choosing how to combine the two, but I'm not sure what that would be or if it would be worth doing.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
I was thinking that shortest in-game level times would be best, since doing otherwise is sort of like waiting to avoid the time bonus in Sonic games. It's probably more impressive to have the individual levels done faster (and not get hit, if possible) than it is to have more of the ending missing.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Frame advance works for me (and several other people), but not for you or Ferret Warlord... What OS are you using? I'm wondering if the Windows code is somehow inadvertently requiring Windows XP. Also, I suppose there's still a slight possibility that it's the wrong ROM. When you go to Utilities->ROM Properties, is the MD5 checksum listed there 559F71B861F639B6376D891E3023414B ?
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
It played back fine for me. Did you get any warnings at all when you tried to play it back, flagitious? About that movie: When you make a selection box to select units, wouldn't it be a lot faster to use the "select all nearby units" button instead? Also, I thought I saw a few places where the analog stick wasn't pushed 100% in any direction when moving the cursor across a distance, and some times where selection boxes were used to select single units when it wasn't necessary.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Here's something: (WIP: http://www.filespace.org/nitsuja/mismakwip.zip)
stage -  wr-time    my time
1-1   -    06.90      06.37
1-2   -    14.43      13.22 
1-3   -    22.43      15.45 
1-4   -    05.97      05.22 
1-5   -    25.85      19.12
1-6   -    34.83      30.82 
1-7   -    20.22      19.05  <- needs redo (< 18.60)
1-8   -    40.22      39.77
1-9   -    22.00      18.13
1-10  -    10.52      10.08

2-1   -    30.40      24.80
2-2   -    14.78      09.95
2-3   -    09.12      08.67
2-4   -    35.67      33.08
2-5   -    09.12      06.13
2-6   -    25.70      24.63
2-7   -    26.00      16.23
2-8   -    21.22      19.83
2-9   -    13.47      10.18
2-10  -    19.73      13.00
2-11  -  1:39.18    1:37.47

out of date:
3-1   -    27.93      19.10  <- needs redo (< 13.95)
3-2   -    26.80      25.48
3-3   -    27.87      23.83
3-4   -    18.97      17.47  <- needs redo (< 14.37)
3-5   -    52.80      54.10  <- needs redo (< 52.80)
3-6   -    20.35      19.22
3-7   -    49.70      24.20
3-8   -    14.32 
3-9   -    34.90 
3-10  -  2:34.38 
3-11  -    09.90 
3-12  -    59.75 

4-1   -    26.15 
4-2   -    26.08 
4-3   -  4:44.10 
4-4   -    40.50 
4-5   -    28.97 
4-6   -    14.97 
4-7   -  1:09.37 
4-8   -    37.65 
4-9   -    35.38 
4-10  -    29.98 
4-11  -    57.07 

5-1   -  1:25.98 
5-2   -    27.43 
5-3   -  1:04.53 
5-4   -    16.87 
5-5   -  1:18.23 
5-6   -    52.27 
5-7   -  1:10.62 
5-8   -  1:20.87
"wr-time" means the best human speedrun times I've found, which I got from the list at the Treasure Fanpage. "my time" means the best time I've gotten so far on emulator. I'm not very far yet, but hopefully the later levels will be better for getting impressive times compared to what's possible on console... Ugh, I just realized you can cancel the end-of-level tune, so I'll have to hex that into the previous levels if it's possible.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Well, the section is called "hacked games / concept demos", and I think this run is as much of a concept demo as it is a run of a hacked game. It doesn't have to be the same sort of game/run as SDW. (SDW is not really a concept demo, although its title of "Super Demo World" might be misleading.) There were quite a few places that looked far from being as fast as possible, so I can only assume that being as fast as possible was not one of the goals in making this movie. (EDIT: which is fine, of course - did I say it wasn't?) Question: What things did Genisto do here that were not intended to be possible, if any? Temporarily escaping above the level is one thing that comes to mind as a possibility here, but some of the things that happened were so odd that I couldn't tell if they were intended to happen.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Unless your graphics card is very incompatible, your computer should be able to handle the game... very slowly, though. I have more than twice the mhz and RAM as that, and it still takes up to 1 minutes for the game to load at the start (probably loading the (skippable) FMV sequence) and almost as long before and after every level. Once it's inside a level it's not nearly as bad, though. I'm guessing most of the slowdown is from heavy use of virtual memory caused by the graphics plugin trying to expand all the little textures and each frame of the movie clips in the game into memory, in triplicate. It's possible that using 16-bit color monitor settings will help. It's also possible that some other graphics plugins are faster despite looking terrible, which might be more efficient to use for actually making a run. (Note that it doesn't matter which graphics plugin it is recorded with for playing it back - plugins can be changed freely without affecting synchronization. The plugins are only stored in the movie and shown in the playback dialog as a hint for what might work well, not because it's necessary to use the same ones for playback.) As for the control in the game, it is joystick-based, but there seem to be built-in hotkeys that make it possible to do many things faster than could be done by moving the cursor over to do them.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
I didn't expect it to, but actually this game emulates pretty well. There are some tricks to getting it to do so, however: - Use Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 for the graphics plugin - Set the Clear Mode to "Only per frame" in the Rom Settings of the video options (you may have to uncheck "Hide Advanced Settings" first) - Make sure Full-Scene Antialiasing is OFF in the video options (also make sure it is not forced on by your graphics card settings) - Expect it to use a lot of memory. If the game appears to freeze, that's probably because Mupen64 is trying to allocate 500 MB of RAM for it.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
tool23 wrote:
I'm not sure why moving diagonally through the item menus would be faster, though, could you explain it? For me it takes 7 frames on the fast-moving item menu going both right-down-right, and right-right-down now.
I think he meant this: In a menu system that responds as fast as possible, right-down-right is: right, down, right = 3 frames right-right-down is: right, nothing, right, down = 4 frames So diagonals will be faster in general because they don't require releasing for 1 frame in-between presses of the same direction in order for them to register as separate presses.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Here is a version of Snes9x (for Windows) that is modified to be better, both for movie-recording purposes and for general use, than the official release it is based on (which is 1.43 Final). Not to say that Snes9x wasn't awesome already, but it was lacking certain features and had various desync issues. There may be changes to the state of SNES emulation sometime soon, but at least at the time of this writing this is the version which is most recommended for the purpose of recording movies of SNES games. download: http://www.filespace.org/nitsuja/snes9xw-improvement7.zip mirror: http://www.wou.edu/~tmontg1/SNES%20Emulator/snes9xw-improvement7.zip source: http://www.savefile.com/files/1817025 Here's the full info: Snes9x 1.43 improvement v7 Newest change(s) in this version: * Fixed the problem with input fields staying green when deselected. * Added another page to the hotkeys menu filled with more hotkeys, so now almost no keys are hardcoded anymore. * Added proper key conflict detection, including between game buttons and hotkeys. * Added more info to input config text message, repositioned some dialog elements, removed controller toggle-mode checkbox, moved turbo/toggle keys around to make more sense (you may have to reassign them if you have them set from an older version). * Fixed a bug (mine) that prevented Pocky & Rocky from working (it didn't seem to affect any other games). * Fixed a bug (not mine) with the & symbol in the "recent roms" menu and author info display. * Made the Snes9x icon high-resolution so it doesn't look quite as ugly. (Just what everyone needed, right?) * Made drop-down boxes that make no sense to type into un-editable. * Added an accelerator shortcut to access the hotkeys menu, put "maintain aspect ratio" and "use video memory" in the Window menu, removed fake accelerators. * Fixed problem with Escape not exiting the Display dialog box. * Incorporated Nach's updated JMA code. General: * Made "Pause When Inactive" an option in the Settings dialog, so you can turn it off if you want Snes9x to keep playing games when it isn't the active window. If you also want sound to play while it's inactive, you can set Sound Driver to "FMOD DirectSound" in the Sound Settings menu. Input-Related: * Customizable hotkeys * The option to allow left+right and up+down to be pressed has been added. * Option to display pressed input buttons (credit to Bisqwit) * Removed 1-frame lag from the input that's displayed. * Added ability to toggle a button on or lock it on autofire using modifiers or a per-controller toggle switch. Very useful for getting around the maximum limit of keys your keyboard lets you hold at once, and also for relieving you from having to hold a button for extended periods of time. * Fixed joypad dialog and added turbo buttons * Made "fast-forward" and "show input" customizable hotkeys, so input can now be shown while playing, and made "save screenshot" a hotkey as well. * Added alternate save state system (increment/decrement/save/load current slot, as new hotkeys). Graphics-Related: * Made black bar at bottom of game optional * Added a display option to maintain correct aspect ratio. * Enabled the GUI option to use video memory and bilinear-filter any mode, not just OpenGL Sound-Related: * Gave frame advance sound (optional) Movie-Related: * Zelda desync bug fixed! (credit to FabianX) * OotW/PoP2 sound desync bug fixed (Fake Mute desync workaround option) (credit to Bisqwit) * Terranigma desync bug fixed (incorporated into Fake Mute option) * Movie length limit fixed (credit to Bisqwit and DeHackEd) * Movie play and record dialogs contain relevant sync-related emulator options. * Added "Clear SRAM" option to recording dialog, so you can make sure you're starting from a totally clean state. * An option to switch between WIP and Final timing has been added, so you can record for the version of your choice and play back either type of movie. * Incorporated important sync settings being saved into movies upon record and re-record, and loaded from them on playback. (Currently, you must click Browse... and select the movie for it to load the sync settings.) This does not interfere with official version compatibility going in either direction, at least not with the 1.43 Final or WIP. * Changed it so left+right does not even get recorded into the movie if the left+right option is not enabled. (Snes9x used to always record both directions into the movie even when it ignored one of them.) * Changed default to read-only for playing movies, since more people seem to prefer that being the default. * The ROM's CRC32 and name are now stored in recorded movie files, and displayed along with your current ROM upon loading. Old movies that are modified using this version will have the new information inserted into the movie using the current ROM. Backward compatibility is still maintained. * Moved frame counter display to not overwrite other messages, changed messages and message timings a bit. Movie Compatibility -- Because there is now an option to switch between timing modes: * This version can play all movies made with either the Final or the WIP, with the right settings on. * This version can make movies for either the Final or the WIP, whichever is desired. Known Issues / things to watch out for: * If you do not record a movie with the WIP1 timing, you may get occasional desyncs while recording, because this is how the official Snes9x 1.43 Final version behaves. * Some games (such as Terranigma) desync when you play them at too high a speed (such as with fast-forward) due to unknown reasons. * Some games (such as Super Bomberman 2 and Mortal Kombat II) require Volume Height Envelope Reading to be OFF to record reliably. * Some games (such as Nosferatu) still rely on specific sound settings (such as a certain KHz rate, etc.) to play back reliably. * Movies will still desync if you play them without letting the game emulate for at least 10 seconds to "warm up" first. * Turning on Left+Right/Up+Down may cause movies that were made without this option to desync. * If you turn on Left+Right/Up+Down, no *official* version of the Snes9x emulator will be able to play back the movie that's generated. * If a movie of a game that was affected by the sound desync bug (such as Out of this World) is recorded with this emulator, it can also be played back in this version, but if you want to play it back with an official version you'll have to set the sound playback rate to <No Sound> when playing it. * The input that is displayed is not updated between frames; you have to advance at least one frame to see the new input you're entering be displayed. * Key conflict catching is not very comprehensive and can also catches things that are no longer conflicts (in which case, just ignore the color).
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Tub wrote:
you might also want to update the URLs in the Thread linked from the EmulatorHomepages-site.
I would, but that thread is locked. I'll try posting in a topic with a more fitting title than this and changing the link to there. EDIT: Done.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Co-op? In that case maybe somebody should do a 2-player run... unless it's much slower and harder to see what's going on (which is quite possible).
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
A separate section just makes it less likely that something which is otherwise publish-worthy will be rejected only because it doesn't fit in with the other games. On another note: "concept demoes" should be "concept demos", and is that meant to also apply to concept demos of non-hacked games?
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
ventuz wrote:
to my finding, glN64 plugin ran this game at awful fps (but good picture), but jabo direct3d8 1.6 ran it smooth (but giving yellow outlines at intro, clancer eyes doesnt glow, etc..)
You can enable "force alpha blending" to make the outlines not quite so horrible in Jabo's plugins (although it's still much worse visually than glN64 for this game).
ventuz wrote:
btw good run, but i couldnt watch any farther after frame 11500's because of desync. If i could redownload v3...
I'm pretty sure the run can be converted to work with v6 with a little easy hex editing at the start of the movie...
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Atma wrote:
Unless the (E) version works in mupen, you'll likely have no such luck making any sort of TAS for this game. Since, plain and simple, it dont work (cuts out at the rare logo in both 1.0 (U)[!] and 1.1 (U)[!]).
I tried the (E) version and it works just as poorly. I found a Mupen64 compatibility list: http://www.emulation64.net/?rubrique=compatibilite_mupen64 Blast Corps is not on it. Then again, neither is Mischief Makers, so it must not be a very complete compatibility list. I checked some other games that have the same RSP microcode as this (such as Duke Nukem 64), and they worked so that's not the problem. I also found in several places references to the fact that "hardware frame buffer texture support is required to emulate this game correctly", but I didn't get the impression that by "correctly" they meant "at all". I tried quite a few combinations of settings and just about everything resulted in the logos zooming by at 300fps and the game crashing/freezing. So I guess for now, no emulated runs of this game are possible.
Post subject: Re: Requirements for handling N64 games on this site
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Bisqwit wrote:
The biggest problem in N64 games we can expect is the emulator compatibility. Basically, each N64 game is a different story, as for how it works in Mupen64, and under which plugin settings it can be expected to be run.
Perhaps a bigger problem is that, if none of the judges have a setup capable of rendering the game accurately enough (this mostly means the graphics card, I think) or supporting the plugins that the game works with, somebody else may have to do the encoding. (I say TNSe should get to encode some of these, minus whatever texture stuff he was showing earlier.) Even Mario 64, the most widely supported game, is (in my opinion) not accurate enough (has many avoidable graphics glitches) in the full-video AVIs I've seen of it so far. As for what plugins will work with which games, I think that is mostly up to the person doing a run of the game to work out. If they can't get the game to emulate well enough then they shouldn't be submitting a movie of it.
Bisqwit wrote:
It can easily become an unnecessarily big amount of work if it's the controller settings are not standardised, and need to be manually changed every time a new movie is loaded.
I made a change to vcr.c that makes this situation a little better - if you have too many controllers enabled, the movie will still play with only a warning given beforehand. And I combined all the multiple warnings into 1 warning, in case there is more than 1. If somebody uses a mempak or rumble pak (for instance to skip an intro sequence that warns it is missing), it will still need to be enabled (I haven't found a way to change the input plugin's settings), but at least the warning generated will be better than simply having an unexplained desync.
Bisqwit wrote:
Another issue we haven't decided yet, is what are the standards we use in the encoding of the AVI/MKV files. Resolution, antialias settings, and so on. Same for the screenshots.
(EDIT: disclaimer: I'm not usually one to even watch the AVIs, so it's probably best not to take what I have to say about this too seriously.) For the AVIs/MKVs, I vote for 640x480 with codec quality lowered as necessary to make a reasonable file size (with antialiasing on only if it makes the file size smaller). I think this will actually appear more accurate than (or, at least as accurate as) rescaling it to the smaller size (as the encoding effectively reduces the resolution/detail anyway). The alternative is to use the exact game's resolution (possibly with scaling from a higher one), but this is potentially more of a hassle because it would require finding what the game's exact resolution is, which is not the same for all games. As for screenshots, those probably have to become 256x192 somehow... using antialiasing (except where it causes noticeable weirdness) and scaling down from 512x384 would probably be best for this.
Bisqwit wrote:
Of course, we need people to have ROMs of N64 games, too...
Well, this apparently hasn't been a problem so far, at least for Mario 64...
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Oh, no you're not blind; the link was invisible until just now, although that page existed beforehand. I added bmglib.dll, btw, so if it's still complaining about it missing for anyone, re-download v6 and it should stop complaining.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
What, you mean http://tasvideos.org/M64.html ? It's already on there...
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
ventuz wrote:
v6 start to yapping about bmglib.dll error thing but emulator/playback works fine, could you it shut up about bmglib.dll error? =/
Oops, yes, I just forgot to include that file.
OmnipotentEntity wrote:
nitsuja, I have a request, I really liked the hex (or rather I really liked being able to read exactly where the analog stick is), can you leave an option to convert the entire thing back to hex or just the analog stick?
Sure - I would've found it useful but I can't convert from hex to signed 1-byte integer in my head so easily... I can see it being useful at least for hex editing, though.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Considering the lengths this hack's author must have gone to to verify that this dense jumble of levels is possible to complete, I'd say it's not too unimpressive a hack. I mean, compare it with one of the much more common hacks such as the "super bald bros" hack, and you'll see it's way more innovative. But, it still doesn't make any sense whatsoever.
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
Blechy wrote:
I think it's safe to say we've pushed the game to its limits.
What if I said I found 39 frames lying around just in the first field? Some of the levels look unimprovable, but I think similar improvements could be made in 2 or 3 of them. Maybe nothing really significant, but then again this is one of the shortest published runs...
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
New version (v6) is up. - Fixed the bug Atma pointed out where after about 9900 frames of AVI recording the GUI would get totally corrupted and stop updating the video (the read_screen code was leaking device context handles). - Changed the input display to actually be readable. (" {>>^} ZAB C^ " = analog is a fair amount to the right and a little bit up, and Z, A, B, and C Up are held.) - Changed the movie format to store author/description in UTF-8, and the dialog fully support displaying it, so now you can describe your movies in Japanese or Hebrew or whatever, and it should actually show up. (Note that if you don't have the right character sets or if you're using Win98/ME and don't have unicode support set up, you'll find many characters display as '?' marks. Let me know if it crashes instead - I'm not entirely sure it won't.) - Fixed movie version storage and added some code to recover corrupted plugin info stored in some previous movies. - "Fixed" the gray-screen thing... by changing it to black. I still have no idea what could be doing this. It doesn't happen for me, and the fact that it still happens when closing and restarting normally implies that it is not a problem with the game restarting code I added. - Made it so you can play a movie if you have too many controllers enabled (it just gives you a "possible desync" warning instead of refusing to play). - If a playback snapshot isn't found, I think it should do something less confusing now. - Added more extensive error checking to various things (AVI output and recording). - Fixed a problem where using an input plugin with mouse control permanently locked out the menu - now Alt will still work to open the menu in that case
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
It's probably not just you. (Edit: Yep, it happened exactly like that for me too. It's fixed now.) (About not being able to minimize, that's because video plugins were never designed with the thought in mind that it might be necessary to draw the graphics somewhere else than inside the emulator window, so the only way to capture the video is to read it off of your screen.)
Emulator Coder, Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Skilled player (1300)
Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687
GeminiSaint wrote:
I want to watch this movie. Where can I find this enhanced Mupen 64 you guys are using?
Here: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2934 Note that it's still an alpha version, so it will probably change (and when it does, that topic should change to reflect any updates). edit2: or if all you really want to do is watch this movie, then of course the AVI will work.