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Well, if you wait 3 seconds at the start and are only 1 second faster than if you had waited 0 seconds, then that means you got faster in-game time and slower real-time, I think.
edit: My level times before without any waiting at the starts of levels or hitting walls were:
Grassland:
6"88
12"13
13"81
Which are clearly worse than you did, but none of them by more than 3 seconds.
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Did you read the suggestions that are already here in this thread? Also, have you tried installing FFDShow after possibly uninstalling your other codecs?
I agree with AnotherGamer that these sorts of questions should be asked in the general forum (if at all) - it's sort of disappointing to see all these "it won't work!" messages that are irrelevent to the movie.
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Maza wrote:
1) When i press Tab, nothing happens..
That probably means your computer is trying as hard as it can but it just can't emulate it any faster. Tab only goes up to about 150% speed for me. It's possible that you can make it faster by choosing faster or older graphics/sound plugins.
Maza wrote:
2) Would it be possible to get the speed up button (+) to work like speed down button(-)? So that it would speed up 10% (or 5%) at a time. Not right back up to 100% with single press.
Maybe your keyboard is different than mine? - speeds it down, = speeds it up, and shift = resets to 100. You're not using the number pad, right?
Maza wrote:
3) I'd like to have the Save State and Load State buttons somewhere closer than in the "F buttons". It would be nice if you could configure them yourself.
I was wondering, is there a good default location for those that's better than F5/F7? I don't normally use that type of setup and I don't know what people normally use, when they put it on the keyboard that is.
Thereisnospoon wrote:
I followed your directions about putting the rom folder in the directories settings, but whenever I try to load the mario rom, from there it still crashes. Its not a particularly good dump, I don't think, could that have something to do with it?
If it's not a good dump, Mupen64 will bring up a warning box that tells you it's a bad dump and asks if you want to continue anyway. When does it crash, exactly? And does it crash even if you don't start recording, or if you wait a while before recording? Which recording option are you choosing?
Michael Fried wrote:
Another thing I forgot to mention is that I have to press frame advance several times, I think something like 5 or 6 times before I see the frame counter again, which goes away when you save or load.
Is it actually frame advancing 5 or 6 times when you do this and the frame counter only appears the last time, or do you mean that the frame advance isn't even working unless you press it that many times in a row?
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Zurreco wrote:
Heh, well. I have my 8th version, which was after I tested all the ROMs out there and retried the 'best' one so many times. Anyways, the smv is http://www.geocities.com/aazurreco/ZDC.zip so have fun with it. If you find a way to fix it... well... I guess I'll start up Demon's Crest again sooner or later.
OK, it looks like this game doesn't have any desync problems, except when you don't use WIP timing. With that, I got through that battle without desync (and considerably faster, I think: DemonsCrest-1.smv.zip). Changing settings won't fix an existing movie that was recorded with different settings, because the input itself in the movie is incorrect (because the emulation screwed up while you were recording it), but it should prevent it from happening when recording in the future. So if you redo everything from that miniboss onward with the new setting, you probably won't have any more desync problems. You could also turn on fake mute and sync samples to be even more on the safe side, but I don't think they make a difference in this game.
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You mean you started from scratch just now and got to frame 9200, which is... which miniboss? (I'm guessing the flying divebombing one.) Actually, could I see the smv of it? I don't think I have any at the moment that use those settings and still lead to a place of definite desync like this.
First, where it says: "Read author's comments in submission #723"
You click on the "submission #723" to see the description.
Now you see "Filename of the ROM used" on the left. In this case it says "rs-dbaa.gba", and in this case that's not much help because it's an abbreviation, so instead, use the Game name, Dragon Ball Advance Adventure, and notice that the Game version says Japan.
In other words, you need a ROM called "Dragon Ball - Advance Adventure (J)" to play that movie. Once you have it, open it in VBA and then play the movie.
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It's says how on this page specifically, at the top: http://tasvideos.org/VBM.html
"The ROM" means the game file with the same name as the one listed as "Filename of the ROM used" on the description page of the movie you are trying to watch. You have to get it yourself; you won't find it here.
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FODA wrote:
I'm using the wall sometimes to help changing the angle, but its not a hit as i still get a star at the end of the level and i do not lose the 3 seconds from when a hit happens.
You mean while inside or just barely in a safe zone, or do you mean you found a bug that lets you bounce off walls without getting hit in other situations?
And if you aren't taking any hits, then isn't aiming for in-game time the same thing as aiming for real-time, with the 100% completion restriction?
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Zurreco wrote:
until i find out why this desynchs on other peoples' systems and not mine
Sorry if I already asked this, but... What synchronization settings were you using when recording this? I would think that recording with WIP timing + Fake Mute + VHER-OFF + Sync Sound + Snes9x DirectSound Driver would keep it synchronized.
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Acmlm wrote:
I tried it once before, the fastest way is to do a lot of combos early rather than x13's and such, and just enough to make the opponent lose (else the blocks are delayed more) ... I did the first 3 stages in Super Hard and won them in about 10 seconds each:
That was much faster than getting huge combos... maybe unfortunately. It was still pretty neat, but I guess a mode like endless going for the max score with x13 chains (and a similar amount of precision) would look more impressive, or at least contain more continuous action.
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Zurreco wrote:
So how can we read into the game code with VBA?
Actually VBA does have a disassembler built in (Tools->Disassemble) to look at the code, and a cheat finder and memory viewer to look at the RAM.
But I meant, Hoe's external tools that need VBA's memory to be shared can be used with this version, because I made its memory shared. I think he already has something called VBARead on his page which is the tool you would need to run while the game is open - the only thing that's missing is the specific implementation of the item/soul drop checking code (in the case of what you're interested in).
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Hoe wrote:
To my knowledge, there is no performance inpact. I, being a fan of this, would appreciate this being in the standard VBA-rerecording release.
BTW, maybe I should also mention here that this has been done. Your tools should work with any vba-rerecording v13 or newer (not requiring a separate modified shared-memory VBA anymore).
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RT-55J wrote:
nitsuja wrote:
The N64 definitely could never handle 60 FPS (in case anyone thinks the emulation is skipping frames or something).
*Cough*F-Zero X*Cough*
Well, if F-Zero X really runs above 30 FPS on the N64 then the sources I read are wrong and the AVI code is also wrong. I was hoping that wasn't the case... EDIT: You're right. I don't see how this could possibly work then, the code clearly says something to the effect of: if(!PAL) framerate=30 else framerate=25;
Michael Fried wrote:
Edit: Btw spezzafer, you didn't do the lakitu skip in that vid!
Yeah, that is the very first test I did (ok, well actually I "time attacked" mario's face first). I tried doing the jump with analog mouse input, but then found that it was way easier to perform by setting up the right camera angle and using a keyboard...
(Thanks for the notice about "couldn't stop playback" and playback/record ... for now I guess the only way to stop recording when it does that is to close the ROM, which also calls the stop recording command.)
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Exactly. Unless I'm wrong.
Actually I'm pretty sure your RSP plugin needs to be the same, but I've only ever heard of 2 different RSP plugins so it shouldn't be that hard to find the right one. Also, in one test I did, changing the input plugin caused a desync. Maybe it's because I had raw data enabled, I'll have to try it again, but the input plugin shouldn't matter for synchronization either because it should be bypassed for playback.
BTW, in my tests on Mario 64 so far, I can say that making N64 time attacks will be challenging. There's so many buttons and possible inputs each frame, so getting anywhere near perfect control won't be easy. Plus, re-recording (saving and loading save states) takes longer for N64 games because the states are relatively huge and the plugins can take extra time to adjust to loading a state. But I think the resulting movies could be quite entertaining even if they're harder to make, as many N64 games lend themselves well to speedruns and time attacks.
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Maza wrote:
Can i get the emulator to show a Frame Counter and Input Display or does it even have these tools yet? The Frame Couinter isnät so important (to me) but Input Display would be really nice.
The frame counter is displayed in non-fullscreen mode in the little box to the bottom-left of the game. It updates less often if you don't use frame advance, so for now you can press \ once to get the exact frame count+1. N64 games run natively at 30 FPS, or 25 FPS for PAL. The N64 definitely could never handle 60 FPS (in case anyone thinks the emulation is skipping frames or something). EDIT: I was totally wrong about this.
There's no input display yet or frame counter in fullscreen mode. I'm not sure how those features can even be added, because Mupen64 apparently has no rendering code at all; the graphics plugin has complete control over the graphics, so I'd have to somehow trick it into drawing the input / frame counter for me or into letting me draw on top of the game. And drawing analog input will take more than text.
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Highness wrote:
Nitsuja! Will you be coding some sort of function like in Snes9x, that fixes all settings automaticly when loading a movie?
Or would people have to make a very detailed list of what plugins and settings were used?
Automatically fixing it would be very hard. Different plugins store their settings in different places and I wouldn't know how to check or change them, even assuming you can have all the required plugins already (and I think plugins are necessarily platform-specific, too). It's much different than Snes9x, because with a plugin system, most of this code is outside of the emulator. For now I was planning on just storing the names of the plugins used to make the movie in the movie file, and warning on playback if the plugins don't match. A detailed list should probably be made, although it could be made for all the games of interest beforehand and referred to, to save people the trouble of discovering it. Some games play fine with almost any settings, though (like Mario 64).
I've heard that there are some new graphics plugins that use pixel shaders to achieve very accurate effects compared to all other graphics plugins (such as the slightly noisy way Mario fades out when he uses a warp on the real N64) but I haven't been able to try any of these yet. I imagine that converting N64 movies to AVIs will be harder than usual because of needing to choose plugins and settings that get the best graphics and sound emulation for the particular game. (On the bright side, AFAICT graphics and sound plugins can be changed willy-nilly without causing desync.)
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Phil wrote:
Don't forget that it may be possible that some games aren't emulated so well.
Only games that are well emulated should be done.
And there's Doom64 and Ogre Battle Person of Lordly Caliber
Keep in mind that the main issue here is the graphics plugin. For instance, if you try playing Ogre Battle 64 you'll probably notice that the graphics are all screwed up. But if you use exactly the right graphics plugin with the right settings enabled, the graphics will be fine. (In this example, I've only had success with Jabo's Direct3D8 1.6 with "Use Direct3D transformation pipeline" enabled - all other graphics plugins/settings I've tried have failed with it.) For another example, Paper Mario will flicker badly with (I think) all graphics plugins, but some plugins have options in them to fix the flicker. There are many many graphics plugins with many settings to choose from, so it might be hard to find a perfect match for each game, but for most games it's not impossible.
Also, some games might emulate correctly but only at unreasonably slow speeds. But this shouldn't actually pose much of a problem if you would be using slow-motion anyway, except to make viewing/encoding it later take longer.
If the actual emulation is bad, that probably means the game will always crash before it gets very far (which used to happen a lot, but I haven't seen it happen yet with any recent versions of emulators, not that I've tested very many games yet).
edit: as for N64 games, I agree with almost all of the suggestions here (especially Mario 64 and Mischief Makers).
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supermegavkoy wrote:
Ok, it doesn't crash when I start recording anymore (I did as you told me), but when I want to "Start Movie Playback" or "Convert to AVI" it crashes. (And how to I make a snapshot?)
You have to restart the emulator (quit and re-open it) between recording or playback attempts, because for now if you do 2 in a row (which is probably what you did) it will crash. The movie you recorded should still be there so you can still play it back.
I haven't gotten around to trying "Convert to AVI" yet so I have no idea if it works, but record and playback individually work.
Save state is F5, load state is F7, and 1-9 set the current save slot.
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Walker Boh wrote:
Then just perform that insane sliding-backwards-at-ninja-speed through the doors and problem solved!
This technique was only used in the speedruns to get through doors, but I wonder if in a TAS it can be used to save time even in normal situations (on stairs or some slopes in levels), since it does seem to be the fastest form of movement Mario can do, in addition to allowing him to pass through obstacles...
BTW, what exactly is a "seam"? I haven't heard this terminology for whatever it is before.
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Well I asked him how to check if it compiles without one and he didn't respond, maybe the answer's "of course you can't" but compiling code is something that shouldn't depend much on the system as long as you're compiling the right files with the right compiler. So my guess is that something can be done with gcc of cygwin. Even if not, I just found the gui_gtk folder, so now I know where the GUI code I'm supposed to also stay compatible with is - I'll at least try not to annoy DeHacked as much next time.
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I found out what everyone's doing differently than me that's making the recording crash! You're using File->Open ROM... to load the game, but that's not how you're supposed to open ROMs in this emulator. Instead, you should go to Options->Settings, click the Directories tab, and Add the folder with your ROMs to the ROM Directories. Now click OK and you can double-click on a ROM in the main GUI to open it, and recording should work without crashing.
(Sorry it currently crashes the other way - I wouldn't think the two ways of opening ROMs would behave differently. Apparently it's because the "last opened ROM" variable only gets updated when you open it with the internal ROM list, so if you open it with File->Open... and start recording it will try to load the last opened ROM which means it will load a nonexistent ROM and crash. This shouldn't be too hard to fix...)
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marioguy wrote:
When I go to the play option, the "start playing video" is blocked out.
You have to open the ROM first. The video is just input that is fed into the game, so it can't work unless the game is running first. (I suppose it could guess which ROM to open for you, but it doesn't do that.)
