Posts for qflame

Posted: 2/11/2018 11:27 PM
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qflame
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (12)
Joined: 11/19/2017
Posts: 6
I can attempt to add entertainment value during bonus stages in future TAS but I am basically limited to dancing around the screen and spamming buttons like I did during trash 3 bonus.
Posted: 2/11/2018 11:16 PM
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qflame
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (12)
Joined: 11/19/2017
Posts: 6
One more thing I forgot, on the suggestion to do a max score run, unfortunately that's not possible as you can grind for infinite points in the caves. Nothing is forcing you to go up and as far as I'm aware the extra points jewels things will keep spawning.
Posted: 2/11/2018 10:59 PM
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qflame
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (12)
Joined: 11/19/2017
Posts: 6
Well I just read through all of the comments as I had no idea that my TAS sparked this debate and was reevaluated until now. I'd like to thank the tasvideos judges for refining the rule that got the run rejected. However, there are still a couple of things I'd like to say. First of all, Math Blaster is literally listed on tasvideos.org as a recommendation for a good game to TAS. Source: http://tasvideos.org/ListOfIdeas/SNES.html Archive in case this changes: https://web.archive.org/web/20180211214345/http://tasvideos.org/ListOfIdeas/SNES.html Math Blaster is simultaneously rejected for bad game choice and listed as a good game choice. On the issue of math being primary or secondary: for anyone who has passed grade school, single digit addition should be instantaneous. The amount that my education has been furthered by this game is 0. However, as an RTA speedrunner of this game, I have improved at the game mechanics. My first run through the game was about 15 minutes, and my current pb has gotten down to below 11 minutes. My math ability remained unchanged the whole time. The ability to do math does not affect TAS or RTA in this game on difficulty 1. And yes, I could easily complete a TAS using the mod that blanks out the numbers. In fact, this TAS would work. As has already been pointed out, the numbers on the screen do not matter as I manipulate them to be whatever I want. In conclusion, this is a game with mechanics, plot, backstory (that is not exclusive to this game), glitches, an active speedrunning community (no I'm not joking, join our discord), listed on tasvideos as a good choice to TAS, where education/math is not the primary aspect for me or anyone else whose age contains 2 digits. If tasvideos does not accept my TAS, that's fine. The decision on this TAS or any other decision does not change the fact that I'm already working on the next one. Currently I'm disassembling the game to figure out how it works and allow for better trash clear patterns and a better cave seed for faster clipping.
Posted: 2/11/2018 9:13 PM
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qflame
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (12)
Joined: 11/19/2017
Posts: 6
I think that does answer my question, thank you!
Posted: 2/11/2018 8:50 PM
Post subject: Need help with SNES disassembly
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qflame
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (12)
Joined: 11/19/2017
Posts: 6
Hello, I'm working on reverse engineering a SNES game to produce a TAS, but I've ran into an issue. A lot of the game's code is within a set range of addresses, specifically 800000 - 9FFFFF. I've loaded up the ROM in IDA and it has found all of those subroutines. However, after taking a look at the disassembler in bizhawk, sometimes the program counter is at much lower addresses like 1984A3, 93B0, 1B978, etc. The disassembler can show me a small window of the assembly code in that range, but there appears to be no way to navigate through, save the code to a file, etc. Normally this wouldn't be a problem as I'm doing a lot of the work in IDA, but IDA does not pick anything up in these ranges and I can't seem to get it to recognize any additional code. Is there some way to get the disassembler in bizhawk to navigate around the code? Is there a better way of doing this in general? Any help is appreciated.
Posted: 12/23/2017 4:36 AM
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qflame
He/Him
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (12)
Joined: 11/19/2017
Posts: 6
Thanks for the reply. The game has 2 modes, "normal" and "practice" so normal is in fact the hardest mode. As for the math difficulty, it ranges from 1 to 12. The only thing that it changes is the math problems themselves. The addition problems get harder, and at difficulties 6 and up it switches to other operations including subtraction, multiplication, and division. The rest of the game is unaffected. As this is TAS and I can do the math problems before they even show up, the only thing that would've changed in the run is it would've taken me an extra second to change the difficulty. As my primary goal was speed I chose difficulty 1. The "extra life" is not a cheat or anything, it's simply a menu option. You can start the game with 3 lives, 4 lives, or 5 lives. If I had chosen 3 lives, it wouldn't have been any harder to complete the game, I just would've had to stop shooting wrong answers at some point and the run would've been 2 or 3 seconds slower. If I had chosen 5 lives, the run would've been 4 or 5 frames longer due to hitting the button to increment an additional time. Therefore 4 lives is the best option. In the bonus stages, the only requirement is that I don't shoot asteroids until the end or else the run will be longer. I did mess around with the controls a little bit at the bonus stage of trash 3, but I appreciate the advice.