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File >Open ROM > choose your desired ROM.
Then go under File > Movie > Record Movie and write info about your movie, then press OK.
If you want more info about TASing, I would suggest checking outthe tutorials on TASvideos (http://tasvideos.org/ArticleIndex.html) under Movies and Movie Making, and going on our IRC channel (http://webchat.freenode.net/?channels=#tasvideos), #tasvideos on freenode.
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c-square wrote:
I enjoyed it. One question: It looked like you did some unnecessary jumping after defeating the last boss. Could you end input on the last hit to shave some time off the run?
I actually have input past the credits to enter my name (watch the very end of the run.)
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Link to video
This game is, to say the least, very weird. That's about all I have to comment on it. P2 because of faster horizontal movement.
A particular trick which is hard to spot but makes the game much more interesting is what I call ghosting. The diagonal missiles are an interesting subweapon, much more than any other weapon in the game, and they are also ridiculously powerful. However, their functionality wasn't implemented very well, and they are also ridiculously broken..
ZZZ uses bullet scoring (pretty much the bane of my existence): hit an enemy, you get 10 points. Kill an enemy, you get their base value as score. That's about it in terms of scoring. However, it gets a little more interesting with diagonal missiles, and their interaction with other enemies.. The diagonal missile has a 'grinding' mechanic where it will, after its initial explosion, continue its path. Combine this in conjunction with broken hitboxes, and you now have an interesting mechanic: what if it was possible to trigger grinding of your missiles without actually killing the enemies? This didn't prove to be successful in most cases, but it was succesful in one case: the moving black helicopters.
As far as I've been able to notice, certain types of moving black helicopters actually move slightly ahead of their hitbox. Normally, this would be a one hit kill with all weapons, but if we hit the 'grinding' hitbox with the heli's hitbox, a rather surprising result happens: you get points without dealing damage at all (a whooping 10 points). This can be taken even further by managing to hit the actual missile itself off the displaced hitbox, for a huge 100 points without killing the helicopter at all.
This ghosting mechanic is very hard to optimise, and does not give many points, but I still optimised it as much as I could because it made for a more interesting run.
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mklip2001 wrote:
Wow. That was incredibly action-packed. If I'm noticing this correctly, are you destroying early bosses faster because you get more powerups earlier?
I'm not sure that a maximum-score run is different enough from the published run to get its own category. Although you fight more kinds of enemies, those extra fights usually aren't very interesting. I didn't like how, in the fights against Cannon and Wilff, you had to spend a lot of time circling around the arena to destroy the enemies on the side before fighting the bosses.
I also notice that you don't glitch out any of the bosses, especially the final fight. Does that actually improve your score, or was it just a style choice?
I liked the movie, so I'm going to vote Yes, but I'm not entirely sure how publishable it is.
Powerups don't actually improve Osman's damage (a good design decision) but instead either increase the amount of copies he can make or gives massively more range to his attacks, in the case of the black suit. The real reason I kill bosses faster is simply due to better optimisation: instead of using jumpkicks like in any%, I simply combo very quickly the straight punch, the strongest normal attack in the game repetadly to kill most stuff, usually at a speed of around 18 frames per combo. This is much faster than jumpkicking everyframe.
I think the maximum score run is pretty different from a normal run: compare it to the current any% and major differences would immediatly be spottable. any% usually skips most enemies, hence why I made this category to show off more fighthing. Plus, it's an arcade game, which is pretty much made for scoring and Osman has some obscure tricks to increase scoring massively.
By glitching bosses, I'm not sure what you mean: if you mean glitching out the final boss via skipping the trio fight, it would be faster but would lose much more points, as you don't kill the trio and don't get the massive score bonus from their kills. This is the method used with any%, though.
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http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16971 if making an video of your TAS is what you are wanting to do.
Otherwhise, if you've made a TAS, the movie file should just be in your /movies folder.
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Pff, 480p60FPS? Meet 360p60FPS:
Source video
And yeah, this bug seems to happen when a video is tall enough, and it gets more severe the taller the video is.
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Link to videoMovie file
8486 frames ahead (02:21.43 seconds.)
More jumping goodness. This is mostly to prove I'm not dead yet; had to restart this once due to wrong emulator settings, but no major setback otherwise. Some new clever routes for jumps are devised, such as the triple jump into wallclimb in the middle of the level, which is almost a second faster than the old strategy.
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<Masterjun> [Guide] How to make threads on TASVideos
<fsvgm777> 1) Have a clear title
<fsvgm777> 2) Have a meaningful OP.
<Warepire> 3) HAVE A CLEAR TITLE
<fsvgm777> 4) ??????????????
<Masterjun> 5) Have a clear title
<fsvgm777> 6) REPLIES!
<Warepire> 7) Profit
<Masterjun> 9) don't forget a step
<Mothrayas> 8) Go derail the topic
<fsvgm777> 11) Oops, I just did.
<Spikestuff_> 12) Make a sex joke
<fsvgm777> 13) Ignore 12.
<Masterjun> 10) don't screw up chronology
<Spikestuff_> 14) Ignore 13, it's unlucky
<fsvgm777> 15) Ignore both 13 and 14.
<Spikestuff_> 16) Have sex with a goat.
<fsvgm777> 69) Oops, I skipped too many steps.
<Mothrayas> 17) is that an australian thing or just ewww?
<Spikestuff_> 18) Now you're legal.
<Masterjun> 17) do not accidentally use a step number you already used
<Spikestuff_> 18) Have a pie.
<fsvgm777> 420) BLAZE IT
<Warepire> 19) End up in the IRC quotes thread
<Spikestuff_> 20) Yell at Masterjun for glitches.
<deepy> 21) Don't add tuna
<Spikestuff_> 22) Enjoy your Pepsi
<fsvgm777> 22) And flutter A.I.
<fsvgm777> ..you son of a...
<Masterjun> 22) do not use step numbers a third time
<Mothrayas> 23) release net-pack
<Spikestuff_> 24) BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. BEEP.
<fsvgm777> 25) Your SHIP is ready!
<deepy> 25) PEEB PEEB PEEB
<Masterjun> 26) 51 B8 D7 A9 70 05 F6 7E
<Spikestuff_> 27) Tampons, not even once.
<fsvgm777> (this is getting silly)
<deepy> 28) You sunk my battleship
<FireFly> You don't say
<Spikestuff_> 29) *old man laughter*
<deepy> I haven't slept in a week
<Masterjun> 2A) do not use hexadecimal suddenly
<Spikestuff_> 30) BINGO!
<fsvgm777> 31) No.
<Spikestuff_> 32) Yes.
<Spikestuff_> 33) BECAUSE MAYBE!
<fsvgm777> 34) Or maybe not?
<Spikestuff_> 34) YOU'RE GONNA BE THE ONE THAT SAVES ME
<Mothrayas> 35) lock thread, now stop
<Spikestuff_> 35) AND AFTER ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL
<Spikestuff_> 36) YOU'RE MY WONDERWALL
<Mothrayas> I'm serious, stop
<Spikestuff_> (stops)
<Spikestuff_> 37) Complain about it ending in IRC
<Warepire> Mothrayas: Are you posting a challenge?
<Masterjun> good job everyone
<Masterjun> this was a good guide
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From what I've observed, Bobby's movement patterns are based on RNG and Jennifer's current position. He will always try moving towards your current direction (either left or right) if you are on the same plane as him (either both on foreground, or both on background). This can already be abused (by using Z walking, which is initiating an action that would move Jennifer from one plane to another, rending her invicible to events, then interrupting that when gotten past it; this also applies to Bobby).
When Jennifer and Bobby are on different planes, there are several different actions Bobby can take, all dictated solely by RNG:
- change planes, the worst possible course of action, as it leads to death (this will not be done if Jennifer is in an unreachable position, but will instead use one of the next states)
- wait; consisting of walking in 'circles' around the area where Jennifer is, even if it's reachable by Bobby, stopping the chase if unsuccessful
- walk to Jenny's position, then stop chasing if unsuccessful
- immediately stop chasing (possibly a glitched state; I don't have full understanding of why it happens)
Changing movement is a no go (thanks to the 8 frame rule of movement; even just stopping would take more than half a second), so the only option disponible for manipulation is pausing. Thankfully, this is pretty flexible, as RNG changes drastically every frame, leading to a different Bobby pattern.
The problem with this, however, is that pausing isn't solely used for RNG manipulation.. it is also used for lag reduction! This game lags a lot, with frames of lag for every 8 frames of movement if Bobby is active (1 frame every 8 frames for Jennifer movement, 3 frames every 8 frames for Bobby movement, and random lag frames for screen scrolling.) As such, there's a drastic need to plan out pauses carefully, as to both manipulate RNG optimally and reduce lag optimally as well. This is why TASing this game is extremely frustating..
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Save state, toggle Read+Write (you can assign this to an hotkey, since you'ill be using this a lot), load state. You will restart your movie from that exact point.
Also, I would recommend using BizHawk for making n64 movies, as mupen movies tend to be not stable.
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Link to videohttp://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/29951463845604102
Stuck on Garage (last room of the game.) I'm not up for redoing this entire room again atm, and this is like a minute away from the end, so if anyone wants to take this up and finish it, feel free; I'm not going to work on this any time soon.
When I said this game was tough.. I think it was a severe understatement; SNES Clock Tower is the definition of frustation. A never ending lagfest, dictated by crushing frame rules and horrible RNG manipulation.
Right now the attempt I have at Garage doens't work for two reasons:
1. I don't have an optimal Bobby pattern, which would be to turn around as soon as I climb up on the platform; this is non negligible, as it saves over 40 frames of non-lag.
2. I'm also pretty sure I don't have an optimal pause before the start of this room, so I lag quite a bit more than I should. Pause buffering is used I'm pretty sure optimally in the other rooms, but not this one.
At the east corridor (the third room) I execute a difficult skip abusing what I call 'Z walking': this skips the trigger for a cutscene and saves about 30 frames. This is also what I use to walk through Bobby in the 2nd Foyer.
Playing around with the cursor serves absolutely no purpose, and doens't lag at all: I do it solely for entertainement.
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Link to videoMovie file.
About 1/4th of the game done.
This is an interesting game, to say the least. Movement is complicated, due to running carrying over some of your speed after you stop; assists are complicated, due to them having a slightly bigger hitbox than you. Lots of time were mostly spend into cutting corners as hard as possible, and optimising running.
An interesting thing is that when you open the telepathy menu, your speed still gets carried over if you choose to order Follow to an ant. This is a double edged sword: while it allows movement in the otherwhise impossible to move small cutscene where the ant gets behind you, it can swing you in the wrong direction, and I have to stop running prematurately sometimes.
The way the game checks if you've done the quest for this first mission is rather wierd. In normal gameplay, you'd have to rescue the three ants stuck in the forest. The way the game checks if you've completed the quest is simply checking if you've interacted with each NPC at least once; I suspect it does this for other quests too. Thankfully, there's one thing about zipping I didn't mention earlier: you are still able to talk to NPCs! I originally dismissed it because I thought of it as irrelevant, but it counts as an interaction and in this case, allows to save over two minutes over doing the quest normally.
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The only way is to change the system time before starting the movie (as in, editing the starting time, by default 6000, next to 'System Time'.) Editing it during movie recording will cause a desync.
Source video
And yeah, this bug seems to happen when a video is tall enough, and it gets more severe the taller the video is.
