Hi,
just nearly through the movie...
My favourite world ever is this secret star world. Besides it being really odd (with those backward-walking enemies and such), the best thing is this part full of doors and pipes all with an arrow pointing to them.
This was very, very funny.
Great hack, great movie.
Thanks!
Philip
Hi,
I voted meh on this, because while it's very well played and the game looks quite nice too, I somewhat would have more liked to see you not just running through all the enemies.
While I understand that this would have been slower, it somewhat removes the movies entertainment value - for me at least.
This is very much IMHO, but I had to vote meh none the less.
I'd love to see someone finding a way of beating this game as fast as OgreSlayeR did, but without taking that much damage by just running through all the enemies.
Whishful thinking. I know.
Philip
First time a 35 minute movie felt like it had been well over 2 hours long... I hate to say this but, the original Metroid was a lot more entertaining to watch, heck even Super Metroid was... Nintendo shouldn't have toyed with the formula.
mmh... the game is certainly easier than any other part in the series. But I think this is made up for by the incredible amount of small secrets in place there, giving the game an incredible replay-value. The designers must have thought of tons and tons of ways of how to sequence-break the game.
No matter what crazy things you try, there's always a way back and a very high probability that the designers even thought of your ideas before and created some other secret to let you pass.
I like this, though this is more relevant when you are actually playing the game than when watching a run.
Keeping the prerequisities for finishing the game low (in aspects of items you need) just makes the thing more interesting to play again, IMHO. I liked ZM very much, though I still think it may have been a litte bit longer.
Mr. Kelly R. Flewin wrote:
I do wonder if you could've destroyed more pirates to prevent lag, but probably even preshooting would've created the same lag.. :(
It would not have lagged in the first place had BoltR began the run after nitsuja fixed the prefetch-thing in VBA. On a real GBA this game does not lag anywhere.
Concerning the movie: I voted yes of course. Much new stuff to see even for me as someone knowing the game quite well.
I found the shortcut to Ridley after getting the ice beam to be the most impressive thing of the run: On one hand because I did not know the trick and on the other because the game designer obviously thought about this and created the shortcut there. There is no other reason for them creating that looong shaft all the way to the bottom.
Philip
Hi,
I wonder how they could make such great graphics and sound in this game.
I mean: Just compare it to SML1. Bigger sprites, better sound, nicer graphics. More levels... It looks more like a SNES game than a NES game.
What is the trick they've used?
Or is it more that the have not nearly invested enough time into SML1?
What I noticed is the very low amount of visible sprites at a time. This may be related as fewer sprites certainly mean more speed reserve that can be used for better graphics.
Comments?
Philip
And one more thing: it looks like you're shaking the Game Boy quite a bit (i.e. you seem to have some of your motion sensor buttons set to your regular arrow keys)
so this is what those characters are for... I've asked myself, what that underscore was doing there...
Philip
Hi,
the only thing I have to say about this is that the first revision of release 6 definitely lagged where a real GBA does not.
I have seen this in BoltR's run of Zero Mission in the location someone already talked about: Just before getting the Morph Ball bombs.
My GBA does not lag there, where VBA does.
So, as long as nitsuja can promise backward compatibility between movies, I see no point in not constantly trying to get the timing better. While to fast an emulator certainly isn't good, those laggy sequences and related graphics glitches aren't either.
Additionally, while I think that VBA is the least advanced (in the sense of stability) of all the emulators I'm having on my harddrive right now, I don't tink that a rewrite will really cure any of those problems we are experiencing. As TNSe said: Timing is incredibly difficult to get right. It's quite pointless to throw away all the working stuff, put lots and lots of time and effort into a rewrite that most likely won't work either in the end (not to say anything bad about the talents of the incredible talented hackers on this site).
Besides: I have some - let's call them "political" - problems about the creation of VBA movies. I mean: Don't tell me that you are not soliciting the download of ROMs from the web.
We all know that not all of us actually own the physical ROMs we are watching and making movies for.
While all other emulators on this site emulate obsoleted hardware, VBA does not. GBA is still an active platform. Games ar still being created for it and sold for the high prices of a current platfrom. Heck, even I'm constantly buying real games for my real GBA. This fact may get this site on the radar at those companies and they may try to find a way to shut this wonderful place down.
So probably I'd be prudent not to create GBA movies for now anyways.
GB, GBC, SGB and what they are called seem clean to me in this respect. Additionally, the GB*-core of VBA seems to have a stable timing, so maybe this really is the way to go.
Please, don't take this as flaming. It's certainly just my personal oppinion, so add a IMHO to all the sentences above.
I'm looking forward to any run being created for this site, regardless of platform and possible legal problems, but I'm just asking all of the readers here to keep the problems with GBA in mind.
Philip
Hi,
while talking in the IRC I noticed that there are many possible interpretations of nitsuja's avatar. A long time I though it being a huge dragon head (the mouth being to the left), but now i see that it's some guy sliding on something (water? dust?).
Well here's what we've seen so far:
Hi,
I've just seen the run so far. Very, very nice.
I'm quite experienced in Zero Mission and played thorugh it about 200 times, but I've not known some of the tricks you where using (especially getting to Ridley after getting the ice beam - is that possible on a real GBA?).
Great stuff!
Go on!
Philip
Hi Nach,
sorry for not being around the last few days, but I had lots of work to do and then there was this growing addiction in WoW which I seem to be getting somewhat under control ;-)
Anyways: Max Frame Skip was always 0.
With the current build I cannot get YI to desync any more, though I have not extensively tested that yet.
I'm still unable to record a movie from power or reset. Whenever one of those options is set and I press record, the GUI closes (correct), but nothing more happens (besides the frame counter incrementing). No Sound, no Video.
This is not configuration-related: It happens also when using no configuration file at all.
What else may be the problem there?
Philip
Hi,
wow... that brings back memories... strangely, more than any other run I've seen before. And I did not even have a gameboy back then.
However, I have some points:
1) It's the ROM version 1.1. 1.0 desyncs at the end of world 1 (mario gets three lives and later on, it's completely out of sync).
2) Are you sure that getting the fireflower after each world is fastest? Would not getting one up be a bit faster (the animation of mario growing looks like it's taking quite some time)
3) In World 4, while I (just somewhat) understand your policy of ending each level as small mario, getting hit later in 4-1 would have saved you lots and lots of time you now spend waiting for those flowers to vanish in the pipes.
4) In 4-1 you miss two shots with the fireballs.
Maybe there's more, but this is what I've seen during my first look at it.
Philip
Hello,
I've just noticed the nice Mario Shortcut Icon here on the forum. Looks very nice. Thanks!
Two things though:
*) The icons can be made transparent. This one seems not to be
*) What about using mario on the main page too?
Philip
Nach,
I seem to be having problems getting this to work. Here's what I do:
1) Start ZSNES, load Yoshis Island
-> Runs normally
2) Select Misc/Movie Options.
3) Start From: Power
4) Display Frames
5) Record
-> The window vanishes, ZSNES restarts the emulation, but the screen remains black. No sound. Just the frame counter incrementing.
Here's my configuration:
http://www.pilif.ch/zsnesw.cfg
What could be the cause for this?
Philip
BTW, did you test out rewind during movie making at all?
actually, I've forgotten, but as soon as I've read your posting, I went ahead and tried it out.
Well, this is extremely useful and works very well. I've assigned it to right Shift, just above the cursor keys I'm currently using (no joypad at the office) and noticed an incredible gain in productivity (movie-making wise - not related to the things I actually should be doing). This is very cool...
Just like this one spell in the 3D-Series of Prince of Persia ;-)
Philip
There's a minor graphics glitch when you create one of those chapters (black border at the bottom)
Can you exlain more?
whenever I hit the key for creating a new chapter during recording, I get about 100 pixels black border at the bottom. I have 'transparent messages' enabled in the GUI Options, though. It's just a graphics-glitch. Nothing serious.
http://www.pilif.ch/zglitch.png
The black border at the bottom should not be there (look at the butterfly cut in half just below the arrow-sign). The colored thingie to the left is the overwritten frame counter.
Nach wrote:
Movie save sates. I could remove it on emulator close, but I highly doubt anyone wants that.
Right. It's actually a very good idea to have seperate movie save-states and to have all movie-related things in one directory.
Nach wrote:
There are some desync issues which are being worked on, a desync which is always 100% reproducable is good to know about, so post about any of these you find.
I can't tell where exactly in level 2 ('Watch out below!') it happens, but it alwas happens in level 2 (before the first middle-ling).
And just now before writing this paragraph, I wanted to retry, if it still desyncs.
Well...
Now I had 4 consecutive plays through the level without it desyncing, then two with desyncs and one without.
It's non-deterministic after all.
But what I can say is: If I don't rerecord, it won't desync.
Nach wrote:
The problem was you didn't have load SRAM from Save State checked. I fixed this problem in recent builds to automatically enable this during movies, which is why you can't reproduce it anymore.
Well' I did not change the build during the test. The problem was right there in your current build (r4 - I put it in a whole new directory without any prewritten configuration file). May I ask where that checkbox is placed?
Nach wrote:
Those are feature requests, not issues with the current movie support. They will be added when we get around to it, we still have a small todo list.
Right. I just wanted to list all that came to my mind.
Go on with your wonderful work!
Philip
I really need some test results here, only person so far has given me any feedback on how new ZMV support + new features is working.
I'm not doing real runs (yet), but I did some tests with ZSNES. Here's what I found out so far:
There's a minor graphics glitch when you create one of those chapters (black border at the bottom)
I really miss frame-advance, but I've already written about hat
There should be a way to name the movie-file, but someone else already said that
What's this <romname>.mzt-directory that's created? Looks like temporary files to me. Maybe you should remove it when the emulator is closed
No matter how many times I try, Yoshi's Island always desyncs somewhere in level 2. Are there any settings to tweak?
I once had a (non-reproducible) problem in YI that when playing the movie, ZSNES loaded the original SRAM-file which lead all the inputs from the movie-file go to the wrong level. Example: I've played until level 3. Then I stopped the movie and hit play. Somehow ZSNES loaded the .srm-File and the movie started with me entering level 3 instead of 1. Unfortunately, I could not reproduce that later.
Please note that I really did only a very small test. Maybe there are more problems I can't see for now. And maybe the last two above are somewhat bogus, but it's what I've experienced.
Philip
Frame Advance hasn't been implemented yet I don't beleive. I don't think there is a pause function yet. Unless I missed something, which I suppose is possible. I just remember pagefault saying it would be a lot of work.
well, I don't know the internals of ZSNES (besides that it contains a lot of messy assembler-code* ), but it seems to me like we are quite there already:
During Play, hit F1. The game pauses and a menu opens
Chose "Increment Frame"
You see?
Now, this functionality would have to be somewhat modified to work without the Menu and to allow reading keypad input.
I really, really hope, this can be implemented as I'd so much like to see ZSNES movies posted here. I'm even seriously considering beginning to do my own runs which I'd so very much like to do with the IMHO best SNES Emulator out there, ZSNES.
Back in 1995, I had a 486 DX 50 with 8 MB of RAM and ZSNES was the only emulator that was actually usable, both speed-wise and feature-wise (though you still had to play with the background-layer-switches to play Zelda for example).
And today, I still think ZSNES is superior to Snes9x. I think, it has the better sound (very subjective oppinion, I know), the better graphics-filters and - at least for me - the better UI (as I'm very, very used to ZSNES).
Now, please put mentally a big <imho> around the above paragraphs, but I really mean what I said.
I love ZSNES!
Philip
*) I once heard that just adding a simple radiobutton to the UI would take weeks to implement, though I assume this gets better and better the more assembler-code is ported to C
Hi,
yes. This is nice indeed. I remember lively being flamed for playing this game and even finding it fun.
All of my classmates did not really like this game, but I had much fun with it - especially because it had this level-editor included where you could create nice exploding cascades - if I remember correctly.
But for a Speedrun I think it suffers from the same problem as all other puzzle-games: A run would be more a walkthrough than anything else, so I won't probably be published because it's boring to watch.
I for my part would have quite some fun watching a run...
Philip
ZSNES now has rerecord support, among other exciting new things for movies.
very, very nice.
I like ZSNES much more than I do Snes9x. So hopefully, many new movies will be created using ZSNES ;-)
As a Windows user without VS, may I ask if someone already compiled the current sources for me to test out?
Philip
What's the movie encoded in? I can't view it, says I don't have the required codec. (or you could just decribe it in hopefully less than 1000 words)
from the error message Core Media Player gives, it is encoded using a video codec from techsmith which are the gays that make camtasia:
http://www.techsmith.com/
I don't know how to watch this without having installed Camtasia.
Philip
Hello,
recently the need for hosting of temporary files grew larger and larger (new builds of emulators, test runs,...)
Those free hosts are crappy and not all of us own their own webspace.
So I created the following:
1) FTP-Account:
Server: nvdata.pilif.ch
User: nesvideos
Pass: zk2gbx4
2) Accessible from the web at http://nvdata.pilif.ch
Plenty of Bandwith is available.
Please don't upload large avis (that's what BT is for) or ROMS (or other illegal stuff for that matter). And don't delete what others posted.
Have fun!
Philip
