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It looks like mupen64 doesn't correctly handle input plugins that use the mouse for analog input. So a joystick would be pretty much required until that's fixed and/or until an input plugin is written/modified with alternate methods of controlling the analog stick with any precision.
(Does anyone know what the "use real N64 range" of some input plugins means? Does it mean that without that option it lets you push the analog stick further away from the center than is possible on a real N64 controller, allowing for things like running faster?)
Anyway it looks like mupen64 would still take a lot of work to get it to an acceptable level. At least it looks stable enough to consider using it, but then again there would have to be more testing to see if there are synchronization or accuracy issues (is there a list of known bugs and games that it doesn't support somewhere?). Also, all the graphics plugins I've seen make a pretty bad approximation of how things look on the actual N64.
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I would estimate that in the common/simple case the search takes between 2 and 30 seconds to do manually, more toward the low end of that range for the simplest tasks but it depends on what exactly you're trying to do. For luck manipulation, though, it can take quite a while since then you're usually stuck doing a linear search. (I would also estimate that this tool would take much more than 2 hours to make, and it would be more of a per-emulator feature than a general tool, not that that affects your argument.)
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Maza wrote:
Is Zero's speed the same if he moves by dashing or by dashjumping?
I mean is there a difference in speed if you use >+L or >+L+A? (>=right, L=dash, A=jump)
You move at the same speed whether dashing on the ground or in the air, BUT jumping causes a 1 frame delay, so jumping is slower except when it lets you go far enough in the air to reduce the total number of dashes you need to make, then it can be faster. It depends on the situation, so it's probably better to test it yourself.
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This movie is done well, but it's clearly not completely optimized even for the parts where taking damage wouldn't be faster, and it seems to start out a little slow and then get better. (Mazzic's 1:39 WIP movie looks much closer to optimal on the first two levels, for example. And I haven't tested this, but didn't someone discover that Samson is faster at climbing upward than the mouse is?)
Also, this game lends itself well to health management with the health-increasing items, multiple characters that have different health, and time-saving tricks that are possible when taking damage, so I think the no-damage restriction makes the run less interesting. It did seem like some of the damage taken in the previous runs was unnecessary, though. I'm not a fan of taking damage where some other solution would be just as fast.
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Bisqwit wrote:
nitsuja wrote:
confusion of controlling 2 players adds about as many rerecords due to screw-up as anything else
For my copy of FCEU, I created a "compose mode" where at every frame, I can toggle which buttons are held down, and if I press nothing, the same buttons will be down that were on previous frame.
It makes the 2p-moviemaking significantly easier.
I already added this to (my unofficial version of) Snes9x so at every frame I can either toggle which buttons are held, or toggle which buttons are on auto-fire, or press buttons normally, or any combinations of those 3 things. It does make it much easier than otherwise, but the number of options present at any given moment (and the lack of indication of even/odd auto-fire) still makes it confusing, which is what I was talking about.
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hopper wrote:
He's not going to finish the movie unless they fix the desync problem, but he doesn't have to because it's not a promise unless he finishes his sentence.
Which desync problem, one he's encountering in Snes9x 1.43 Final? That's the reason I use the WIP (or WIP timing) is because that desync problem is mostly gone there. I know he modified his version for better joypad input, but can't those modifications be re-applied to 1.43 WIP?
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I might do a 100% version, I like that ending too (and hopefully most of it can be hexed in), but... sometime later.
I'll note that in a few places where I use the star it only saves a really tiny amount of time, like 2-5 frames, even when it looks considerably faster. Better than nothing, I guess. But I was expecting to be able to get more of an improvement in the time, to tell the truth. (If only there was some way to skip more of the boat ride or get those useless pterodactyls to turn around.)
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Animadverto wrote:
Unless there is some huge time savings we all aren't aware of...
I'm not talking directly about this case (for a no-damage run of this game [edit: that doesn't use the warp trick] I'm guessing you're right), but never underestimate how likely it is that there are still tricks nobody thinks are possible. It's a lot harder to find those tricks when you've decided they don't exist.
daniayaw wrote:
why dont u two do a project together?^^
Well they appear to be in disagreement about the best way to do it, for one thing...
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I do something similar, with results saved circularly on 4 slots that are dedicated to it (and 1 slot as backup in case I screw up), to minimize advances as he suggested. Well, first I try it at normal speed a couple of times to narrow the range of possibilities (so in this case I'd guage that it's between about 15 and 30 frames, and only search that range unless I hit the edge of it).
But, a lot of times things aren't so simple as this. For instance, if you want to jump as little as possible but you need to shoot an enemy that's in the air, then you have to find the earliest frame in which you can fire a shot that will hit the enemy, and also find the moment to jump and the jump duration that result in that shot hitting the enemy with minimal time spent in the air. Often when there are additional constraints like that and more buttons involved, I don't even know if there's any solution at all. That's where I find most of my rerecords going (into attempts to do things which, after many tries, I decide are probably impossible), except in 2-player runs (where the confusion of controlling 2 players adds about as many rerecords due to screw-up as anything else).
I think the frame search feature wouldn't be a bad idea, but it makes me wonder if something more general-purpose could be done that's still less tedious than current methods.
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Maza wrote:
When you are in the bossfight, you need to reduce the boss' health to get the Z-sabre, not your own. (yes, I have tested that).
No, they both work. If you take a hit in the boss fight that brings you down to really critical health but doesn't quite kill you, you automatically get the z-saber. Getting hit is a lot faster than beating up on the boss for a while, so that's the best thing to do unless aiming for a no-damage run.
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82-35-43 wrote:
I can't run two Snes9x applications at once in Windows XP.
I can. I usually do it to watch runs of the same game simultaneously to compare them and see where one gets ahead of the other. (But, it won't work so well in this case, as his movies often eventually desync in the versions that can do that, which probably means I screwed something up.)
edit now that I actually looked at his post:
Has DeHackEd gone insane? Beating MMX + MMX2 + MMX3 + MM7 all with the same input? (This is looking excellent, except maybe that bit near the end where X died and his future selves somehow kept existing.)
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ventuz wrote:
*thinking of it as being Bionic Commando, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker, and Ninja Gaiden all combined in one*
Michael Jackson's Moonwalker?? ... oh, actually, you're right, I'm surprised at how many similarities there are. Rooms to go in with hostages to rescue, a cave level with spiders, then a base level with lasers... Too bad this game's character doesn't dance or turn into a giant robot.
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VBA stores the time you start the run at in the movie file, and sets its internal clock to that upon playing the movie file, and when a movie is being recorded or played back it uses the game's frame counter instead of the system clock to modify the internal clock. But, this functionality has never been tested with this game so it's possible one of those steps isn't happening correctly...
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Have you tried doing the Snes9x restore trick (running snes9x.exe with the commandline parameter of -restore) and then restarting the whole computer when you have nothing in (no CDs or DVDs or floppies or zip disks etc.) and then starting up Snes9x and loading a ROM when there's still nothing in?
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TheAxeMan wrote:
So the big decision is whether to kill no enemies or kill all enemies. Both would look pretty impressive if done well, but killing no enemies is of course much faster in realtime. Killing all enemies will pump my levels sky-high, making the rest of the campaign even easier. With the stats I've manipulated, this was easy to do even without savestates.
What exactly are your goals again, minimum turns or minimum moves or minimum time? I'd go with killing all enemies, but if aiming for time then I guess that's only worth it if you think the level-ups will speed things up enough to eventually make up for the time it takes to kill them.
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FODA wrote:
I tried a 2 player version of this, on advanced mode.
Hmm, looks like it's going in slow-motion. I guess having 2 players adds a lot of lag in this game, at least in FCEU. So far this is definitely not more entertaining...
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I didn't realize luck could be manipulated like this in this game. This will be interesting... One question: Why do you save in-between levels, just to show the chapter title?
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daniayaw wrote:
that problem with the strange loading cd-rom when loading a rom even when i never used the cd-rom for something with the emulator? i think its something related to your improvements since in the snes9x official forum no one complain this..
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The last I heard, it's a bug in some version of Windows. FYI, I have Windows XP, a CD drive, and a DVD drive, and I've had things in both of those drives on and off, and not once has Snes9x ever tried looking for something on them.
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to Tombad and daniayaw:
I can't tell if this has been answered yet, but... the reason he misses so much in the 2nd battle is because it's scripted that that has to happen, it's basically part of the tutorial that there's no way to avoid.
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Bag of Magic Food wrote:
So not just manipulating Bomberman's walk cycle after he gets a skate so that the 2-pixel moves come up earlier?
Bomberman doesn't accelerate, he just stays at his max speed. The max speed oscillates, but that's not something you can manipulate during the walk without completely stopping for at least a frame (since there's no momentum), so the oscillation would have to be quite large to gain any time that way.
This is something that's more likely to apply to games where the character has some sort of momentum, like other Mario games, and only if the running physics are programmed in a really weird way (like in Super Mario World).
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I'm pretty sure the one in 1-3 is worth getting, since you have remote bombs by then and it's near the shortest path. I think the one in 1-1 is not worth it, but I'm slightly less sure about that. I would guess that the maximum speed is something like 6-8 skates and that the fastest route involves getting that many before about halfway through the game.
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You could try using the modified snes9x (snes9xw-improvement7) and turning on certain synchronization options when recording.
You should play back your movie every once in a while before you're finished recording it to make sure it's ok. That way you can catch desyncs and regular mistakes before fixing them might require starting over.
Also, pay attention to the sound and if you ever hear the sound glitch out (like the wrong sound effect plays or there's a static noise) when you're making a movie, that might mean that a desync just happened and you can reload a state before the sound glitch happened to fix it. It doesn't always happen, but that's the only desync warning sign I know of that can happen during recording.
