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Spinal wrote:
@SatoshiLyish: I like your effort, but I don't feel it's working. For a still scene with 2 frames it works fine, but in a movie it just looks as if everything is "jiggling" and it doesn't give me a 3D-effect at all.
The best solution would be to alternate every frame, but to use both sets of frames for 120fps video.
Too bad the average monitor isn't going to be able to display video that quickly.
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In fact, we used to publish some of those Doom runs way back in the early days of the site.
I don't know if anyone remembers why that's no longer the case, though.
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Quite the opposite - having a good point of reference when making a TAS is extremely helpful, and often recommended for people who are new to the process.
That having been said, if you're willing to get copious amounts of feedback while creating the run, that should not be as much of an issue.
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Might as well complete the set of threads for the newer games, especially since this is the most widely known.
Anyway, I found an any% speedrun which completes the game in about 13 minutes: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2209029215006847575
There are clearly improvements there (also, we'd want to see a run on Hard instead of easy) but it should be useful for basic route ideas.
Also, an all levels run may be desirable.
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Here's a screenshot:
Although that's optimised, it's above the normal screenshot size limit. I'll replace it after publication, but for now use this JPEG for publishing:
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One thing I noticed is that you seem to spam machine gun fire a lot, wasting a lot of ammo. If you make another version of this, try to cut down on the number of missed shots - it looks bad from a TAS perspective.
In general, try not to slow down at all if possible; use frame advance and copious amounts of rerecords to avoid enemies as necessary. There is no such thing as playing a segment too much from said TAS perspective.
Overall, I think this is a good starting point for a TAS when openMSX becomes ready for the site. Good work.
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
I am really sorry if I caused all this trouble. I was under the impression that archive.org was the host of choice because I saw many other people uploading movies there, and I just went with that. Which is understandable, as there are no ads, no download caps, nothing of the bad things which usually come from Mediafire, Megaupload, and so on. Last time I checked, those hosts were extremely discouraged.
That said, I realise that this can't possibly continue, so I'm hereby requesting to have my Movie Editor powers removed, I won't make any other encodes in the future.
There's nothing wrong with use of archive.org for a published encode, such as for encodes for the unmirrored movies project (which is why you have those powers in the first place). It's where we see several encodes for a recent submission that the problem begins to arise.
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
Hold on! There seems to be something wrong in the encode. I am not sure if it's a problem with the emulator itself, or the rgb dumper, or the encode, or even my Media Player Classic, so I am just reporting this here, so Ilari and Sgrunt can see and decide what's wrong.
We are looking into this and it appears to be present in the emulator, so it is not a problem with the encode. More details to come as we find out more.
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JPC-RR is still relatively new, and I'd recommend getting used to the general process before attempting to make a TAS with it. That eliminates the DOS games.
Mario 64 is also heavily TASed at this point, so you would need to achieve a very high level of precision for any sort of playaround (besides which I don't think the community would be too receptive to such a run). Also, the emulator in use for N64 games (Mupen64-rr) is not particularly reliable and a poor starting point.
That leaves Splatterhouse and Nightshade. Mednafen/PCEjin and FCEUX are both fairly robust and reliable; the latter is probably the best supported TAS-capable emulator these days and it would make for a better starting point, I think.
I'd strongly recommend posting progress in a game thread in the appropriate forum.
Also, welcome aboard!
EDIT:
Kyman wrote:
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Phallosvogel wrote:
Like how do you rerecord?
Exactly as any other emulator - by loading an earlier state.
Phallosvogel wrote:
How do you end movie recording?
By saving a movie file at the desired end point; the site's parser will consider the length of the movie to be to the last input event.
Phallosvogel wrote:
How do you even tell that you are still recording?
The input stream is always recording; you can save a savestate/movie stream at any time.
Phallosvogel wrote:
What about frame advance?
Extra -> Frame Advance -> Start causes the system to advance exactly one frame on issuing a Start command (bound to 5 by default).
Phallosvogel wrote:
Savestats?
Extra -> Save / Extra -> Load (bound to the F keys and Shift+F keys respectively).
Phallosvogel wrote:
Did anyone look into the file formats?
Considering I needed to write a parser for the file format, we've obviously investigated it.
We did review the emulator prior to submissions being made here, or the code to accept movie files using it would not exist. It is true that it is less intuitive than some of the other emulators here, but it is still quite usable and it will only improve as more interest in it arises.
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I'm going to resurrect this thread with the intent of using it as a base point for future runs of the game.
It can be completed astonishingly quickly by means of a glitch known as the Impossible Bullet Trick (by analogy of the Impossible Pogo Trick). There is a YouTube video which completes the game in 3:26: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ywDELqAass
It would make for a good short project for someone who wants to familiarise themselves with the emulator.
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I've been dutifully encoding this again for the past few days.
Why? For the chance to have it on YouTube... in EPIC 1080p 3D!
(Not done HDifying yet at time of post, but it should be done in the next couple of days.
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
Sgrunt, if you're reading this, should I set the Aspect Ratio to be 4:3 even if the resolution is 256x224? It would look badly wrong if stretched in that way.
Yes. The console would do exactly the same thing, and it is the site standard.
EDIT: I just finished watching this. I don't really see the appeal; it's not particularly fast paced and there's nothing particularly novel in the game play. This earns a definitive Meh.
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Upon seeing this thread, I went to investigate the SVN version of OpenMSX (which will become the as-yet-unreleased version 0.8.0). A basic form of rerecording appears to be present in the form of the "replay" command and its subcommands (recording from reset would be done by setting auto_enable_reverse and restarting the emulator), and you can easily implement frame advance in the emulator by binding a key to "set pause off; after frame \"set pause on\"".
About the only thing I can't see that it does right now is store the author or a rerecord count in the replay file format.
I'd be interested in seeing if other people can get the emulator to behave in a fashion suitable for rerecording; if so we may yet be able to get MSX rerecording.
One other note: a wide variety of MSX system BIOSes appear to exist. We already have a rule in place regarding BIOSes, so finding something that works for a given game should not be too troublesome (also there is C-BIOS, which may or may not work reliably for most games).
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BadPotato wrote:
That said, I woud like to know how you proceed for encoding with sound... and since there already a lua windows with JPC-rr, it would be nice to have an input display.
Prior to starting playback, pay a visit to System -> Dumping Tools, enter in file names for the appropriate streams (Skyroads uses video, obviously, and the two SoundCard channels - the first is PCM, the second is FM), and press Start next to those. Then start the movie; the files generated will be raw video/audio streams in a format that can be handled with the stream tools (available from the same place you got the binaries), the output of which will be raw video/audio in an output suitable for further processing by the standard encoding process.
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While the run has obvious technical merit (in particular in stages like 10-1 where there's a bare minimum of fuel left) and there is a feeling of speed, the run as a whole just isn't very interesting for me to watch. I never get much of a sense of thrill or danger narrowly being avoided.
I'm not very familiar with the game other than its reputation for being challenging, but this run, in completing it so efficiently, manages to make the game look boring.
I vote Meh.
Encode is in progress.
EDIT: Encode available here: http://www.archive.org/download/DOSSkyroadsByIlariIn1555.91/skyroads-tas-ilari.mp4
I'll add a streaming link when the derive finishes.
EDIT2: http://www.zexsoft.com/aktan/?DOSSkyroadsByIlariIn1555.91/skyroads-tas-ilari
EDIT3: That link doesn't seem to work (bad video). I'll tell it to re-derive to see if that fixes it.
EDIT4: The 512kb doesn't seem to derive properly, so I'll just point the stream link at the normal encode.
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The instructions there are slightly obsolete - they assume that you're building JPC-RR from source rather than using the prebuilt version. (The BIOS images are already present in said version.)
At least a handful of other people running Windows 7 have reported that removing "java -jar" from the command line in start-jpcrr.bat yields success. What do you mean by 'doing nothing'?
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I would advise those interested in running this to focus on one episode at a time (possibly to be submitted as separate runs in the spirit of e.g. SaGa Frontier) - especially the first episode as it is the most widely known.
That having been said, I eagerly anticipate any interest people would have in running this game.
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I see nearly two minutes of walking followed by a game-ending glitch. Normally the former would be a barrier to entertainment, but seeing as this is still an exceedingly short run I can live with it.
Yes vote.
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The option you're looking for is in Drives -> Import Image.
Be sure that the list of files in the directory matches what's in the submission text before you do so, though.
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This would be a gold mine of luck manipulation if someone was willing to thoroughly investigate. The game is immensely challenging on the highest difficulty levels and seeing someone blow through it in record time would be immensely satisfying.
Although that's optimised, it's above the normal screenshot size limit. I'll replace it after publication, but for now use this JPEG for publishing:
