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I think a game with gameplay this simple might be a good way to get a feel for frame advance and re-recording, actually.
To summarise very briefly: frame advance implies advancing the game one frame at a time (pausing the game, holding down the desired input for the frame, and pressing the frame advance key, usually \), and re-recording involves use of save states whereupon loading a save state causes the movie you're recording to keep only the input up to the point where the state was saved, allowing you to perform segments again with an arbitrary amount of precision.
There are some pages on the main website which would help you get a feel for things; here is a good place to start.
It helps if you have an objective in mind; if you want to get a feel for things with this game, try creating a movie of the first stage with every shot you fire hitting an enemy, preferably as soon as possible; this would be approaching the level of precision we aim for around here.
Good luck!
EDIT: If you have further non-game-specific questions, I'd ask them over at the Newbie Corner. It's friendlier for helping out the newcomers than in a game thread.
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Seems like the submission poster borked again - if you edit your submission text it should fix itself.
Anyway, the improvements are very visible in the form of much faster character movement (usually). This is a plus in my book, and strengthens my previous Yes vote.
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Not very impressive; lots of missed shots, etc.
How familiar are you with the concepts of frame advance and rerecording? It doesn't appear that either has been used here.
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Just when I thought I had gotten "Jonasan! Sharotto!" out of my head from the last run, along comes this...
It flows much smoother than the old run in places, and I salute your lag reduction efforts.
Yes vote.
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Seems to be largely similar to its sequel in terms of gameplay, and in terms of the two to three levels that seem to keep repeating themselves.
For the same reasons as over there, meh vote.
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As much as I can tell that a lot of time and effort has been put into making this (it's basically a prerequisite for a sufficiently good-looking run any sufficiently 3D game), I just didn't find it all that entertaining. Perhaps this is because I haven't really dealt with this game before, but it felt like I was watching the same two or three levels over and over again.
I suspect that fans of the game would enjoy watching this, though.
Meh vote.
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Well, it's more interesting to watch than the other Batman game run on the workbench at the moment. The "batclaw" mechanic makes for faster gameplay and the graphics are much easier to pay attention to for extended periods of time.
It's still another bland action platformer, but due to the above, and because it's short, I think there's enough here to push my vote into weak Yes territory.
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Impressive, and shows off the game significantly better than the previous run. I'm not as familiar with this game so I'd be interested in hearing how much time is gained from not having to watch cutscenes (so as to provide a better idea of how much slower this is than the current any% run).
I'm not a fan of starting from SRAM, but it seems to have been put to good use here and it's not something that I, personally, would hold against the run.
In any case, yes vote.
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The run appears to sync here with a fresh copy of 0.9.4+.
There was at least one instance where the run failed to sync in the manner you describe with my primary computer. I don't have access to that now, but I do recall it having something to do with there being another ROM version floating around (the one which syncs has CRC DE3E278C).
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A sound improvement, which has a decidedly more optimised feel than the previous run of this game.
I paid close attention to 6-3 and didn't see any gaping flaws, although it did indeed seem slightly sloppier than other levels (it's not something I can seem to put my finger on).
In any case, yes vote.
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I watched adelikat's run of the NES version prior to watching this to serve as a basis for comparison of level of optimisation.
The games are sufficiently different that I don't think such a comparison is possible.
There are a few points where it doesn't look like you hit enemies as soon as possible, but those are rare enough that this is, in my opinion, worth publishing.
For the two reasons that this is substantially different than the NES version and of reasonable quality, I vote yes.
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I can think of one advantage of having a run of the Saturn version here, and that's not needing to start from a save state (always a plus in my book). For that reason alone, I can envision a run of this type eventually being published.
That having been said, you've mentioned that you think a more optimised version of this run is possible, and using the latest and greatest version of the emulator would be a good step towards doing that.
I don't think, however, that this iteration of the run should be published.
Therefore, no vote, but with the hopes that we can see an improved version of this run at some point in the future.
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GrafZeppelin wrote:
dshow [error]: failed to render Wrecked.avi
error code = 7
x264 [error]: could not open input file `Wrecked.avi'
Just to note: error 7 means that the AVI is not in a codec that x264 is capable of reading; I would follow Aktan's advice in using one of the codecs that he has listed.
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(Per discussion on IRC.)
It's been pointed out that this game is actually for the SuperGrafx, an enhanced version of the PC Engine (TurboGrafx-16).
The question at hand is whether we should create a new system designation for this purpose or leave it under the PCE designation; more generally, we should decide what should be done under the circumstances where two or more very similar systems (generally run with the same emulator) have runs produced for them.
Personally, I'd lean towards the new designation, given the precedent set by the Genesis/Mega Drive/32X/SegaCD designations (and, to a lesser extent, the SMS/GG designation).
Anyway, your opinion is wanted, so extemporise away...
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It's oddly hypnotic, despite this being the sort of game that normally doesn't hold my attention. (Perhaps it's the floating, or the different weapon mechanics?)
In any case, yes vote.
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GrafZeppelin wrote:
start /wait mencoder.exe -aspect 4:3 -oac copy -mc 0 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=ffv1:vstrict=-2 -o mixed.avi logo.avi recorded.avi
first command after creating logo.avi and recorded.avi <-- screws my Video
I'm not sure what you mean by this - are you saying the results from mencoder aren't what you are expecting?
GrafZeppelin wrote:
start /wait x264 "mixed.avi" --deldup 40 --pass 1 --bitrate 350 --keyint 300 --ref 15 --no-fast-pskip --bframes 6 --b-adapt 2 --mbtree --weightb --direct auto --subme 9 --trellis 2 --partitions all --me umh --merange 64 --threads 1 --8x8dct --no-dct-decimate --output "encoded.mp4"
this one crashes the x264.exe :( i need an easier way
Can you give details about the crash?
It's been my experience that direct264 is fairly finicky about what video formats it will accept for encoding purposes. If you have lots of disk space, you may want to tell mencoder to output raw (uncompressed) video, which in my experience has yielded the most consistent results:
You can use different settings for format= there; I picked that one because it was the first I came across that worked when fiddling with raw video settings.
Also note that I specified -nosound; I normally handle sound separately and mux it back with the video after video encoding with mkvmerge. You could just as easily use -oac copy again so you don't need to fiddle with the sound to get the right amount of silence at the beginning in your mixed.avi, but I still recommend you deal with the sound separately.
One more note: if you're looking to do an encode to the site's standards, you'll also need to add in subtitles, which I normally do at the given mencoder stage with -sub; will you need to know how to do that?
I'm sure our other encoders here will have their own ideas and disagreements with my methods, but hey, I just try to do what works. :-)
I wish you success with your encoding.
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How soon before this gets cancelled again? ;-P
I could have sworn there was a published run of this game at some point. Perhaps I remember watching one of your previous WIPs, or attempting to watch the run over at SDA.
Anyway, on to my major points:
You make the core gameplay here looks to me like it's 90% walking through empty screens from location to location. While I can appreciate that a good deal of this is due to copious luck manipulation, it makes for an extraordinarily boring end result, and the remaining 10% of the action isn't enough to salvage the game from that, especially for a run of this length.
You've clearly demonstrated a reasonably high level of technical skill at this point in the number of iterations of this run, and I'm sure that this run will appeal to fans of the game, but it just doesn't do it for me.
Voting meh.
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Wow... yet another generic action platformer combined with another generic side-scrolling shooter.
A combination like that needs more interesting game mechanics than what the above implies, or at least a healthy dose of glitches, to make a run of something of the sort remotely interesting.
It's not a reflection on your level of play, which is good, but on the game itself.
I am giving this a Meh.
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I... just can't get into this game, no matter how well it's being played. It's too slow-paced and doesn't demonstrate any particularly interesting game mechanics.
That would be a Meh vote for choice of game.
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The shuffled-around min()s have the interesting effect of the submission being guaranteed to hit 100% confidence eventually, even if the voting is heavily divided. With the formula as written on the queue, an evenly split vote would only ever reach 41% confidence, and could only ever reach 100% if the voting was completely in one direction (it could get arbitrarily close to 100%, but never reach it).
Which is preferable? With the currently implemented formula, 100% is reached with at most 27 votes, and as few as 12 if the votes all go one way.
I can see arguments going either way - after 27 votes the judges should have a very clear picture of what the viewer feedback on the submission is; however, if the voting is very heavily divided, we have no way of knowing what the average viewer will think of the submission.
Have there been any major controversies over this in the past?
