Posts for yep2yel

Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
feos wrote:
Does https://www.speedrun.com/blues_clues_blues_big_musical/run/m3309p4m look so much shorter because it was done on PS2 where loading is shorter?
Yes, that's correct
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Hi everyone. Little late to the party, but wanted to let everyone know I'm working on a tas of Shadows of Almia right now. I'm about 45 minutes in, and it's been a blast. Looking at the past posts, I can say a lot of progress has been made in making this actually possible to tas. Having tastudio in bizhawk is a god send; I don't think it'd even be possible for me personally without it. I tried TASing the original in desmume years back, but found the timing was horrible as triangles would drift. With the better timing of bizhawk, it's a simple one frame for one vertex. However, a member of the rta community let me know that stars are actually faster than triangles. I tested this out and found you can do 2 loops in 5 frames with stars versus 6 for triangles. Because of this, and because of how fast fights are, I doubt I'll even need to use Pachi much at all. If it turns out this is true, it's possible getting Starly is faster. Second, getting suboptimal captures is preferred as that is less xp bonuses that pop up and less xp to scroll through. To do this, I just added a single blank frame during the capture so that I didn't get the one line bonus. From power on to Gastly, I saved a whopping 7 seconds compared to optimal captures. Also, when the xp ticks by, if you hold down A, if ticks by faster. 4 frames per tick without it, 2 with. It either has to be A or touching the screen, other buttons don't work (that I'm aware of, at least). Third, I found a glitch when Kramu (I don't know his English name. The guy you meet during ranger day at the school) is teaching you about Poke assists. If you hold B when the game selects Blastoise, it will trigger instant text for 2 extra text boxes. No idea why, but it saves over a second. Right now I'm almost 2 minutes ahead of the wr. A Japanese TASer did one on nico nico in 2016, but it's very unoptimal. Not sure if I'll be able to beat it, though, because the timing seems to be off. Perhaps the difference between desmume and bizhawk is large enough that it negates the benefits
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
My little two cents would be first that I do support getting rid of the triviality rule. However, one counter-argument I wanted to highlight was brought up when I joined an Ace Attorney discord server and brought up I was doing a TAS of the first game. One guy was arguing how trivial the game was, and argued that a game like that would "always come to the same time". What I assume he meant by this is that there would automatically be a fastest time, and it would never be improved. I explained this assumes we would never find any new glitches/tricks in there. There could, for instance, be some ACE in there which allows us to warp straight to the credits. Likewise, say we find a game that is seemingly incredibly trivial, then someone comes along and finds that there's a way to completely destroy the game. We just don't know, and can't predict the future. Next, I do agree with Samsara that we should carefully examine our definitions, especially the ending of a game. I disagree with her in that I don't think it's possible to get a universal definition for the end of a game, because some games are so ambiguous and you'd have so many edge cases pushing that boundary. I think if anything's going to be a guideline, not a rule, it's the ending rule. We could maybe do it on a game by game basis.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Reviewing Syncs on 2.8 and 2.7. Is frame perfect in what it sets out to do; I wasn't able to find any improvements. The category feels a little weird as you're just getting a draw, not some kind of win, but I think it can be viewed as getting the game to a finished state with the use of 2 players, and we can always make separate categories. Overall, while the category gives me personally a slight pause, it seems perfectly acceptable for publication.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
ShesChardcore and negative seven found a total of 3 frames of improvement https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638032855262890874 I won't worry about updating the encode unless it's deemed necessary as it's visually the same gameplay
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Link to video Temp encode
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
AleMastroianni found the xyz coordinates for the game here https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638009322498218193 Now we just need to document the level ending coordinates and walk on out of bounds to them
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
I've started work on The Fifth Element The rta "community" (which is really just one person) keeps track of the PS1 and PC versions separately. Because of this, the official record for this is 2:02:17, however the PC version is faster and from what I can tell, the tricks used in it are possible on PS1 (though I don't guarantee that). The PS1 record can be found here https://www.speedrun.com/the_fifth_element/run/m7q2kv4z PC can be found here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9o11I9YokA I've managed to implement the Leeloo mission 5 oob successfully, however I'm stuck on the Korben one. I can get the clip and some navigation correctly: if you notice there are certain sound cues one can use, i.e. a factory hum shortly after clipping and then loud machinery telling you to start turning left. However, I don't know how far to turn left, and the rta clip has flashing lights appearing at the bottom shortly after which I can never get to appear. I was told to start looking at memory to see if I can get the coordinates. I was possibly able to get the player Z-position at the 2-byte address 1F2FB8, but I'm starting to doubt this as it's not changing in other levels. It's possible the game uses this address for Z-position just for this level, though. X and Y are trickier though as the search doesn't seem to yield anything concrete. Now, I know I'm usually bad at finding addresses, so I would like to see if more tech savvy people can look into this and try to find them. My progress so far can be found here https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638008580734190404. Used Bizhawk 2.8 and the rom name "Fifth Element, The (USA).cue" As Feos said in Discord, it would be a shame not to implement this known clip and have the run in a weird grey area of TAS not able to compete with human capabilities.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Review: Looking at this run from a casual perspective, it looks very clean and solid, and taking TAS tools to it, it looks just as good. Movie syncs up just fine on both 2.8 and 2.7, and it's very optimized. There might be a hint of a few frames to save at the beginning by pressing down earlier, but whatever I did desynced it and destroyed the run as it screws up the rng. So, overall from what I'm seeing, it's frame perfect with what it's doing. It achieves its goal, and doing so on the hardest difficulty, which is preferred, and while I do wonder if the easier difficulty would be faster, from what I tested, it appears that this is faster anyway. So, at the end, it's a very lovely TAS that tears its game apart.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
BigBoct wrote:
How much time would it cost to substitute one of the visits to door 8 with a visit to door 3? I agree that seeing all of the escape sequences would be a worthwhile tradeoff to make the movie more interesting.
I personally don't like trading speed for entertainment. It would probably cost a decent chunk of time, maybe around 15-30 minutes, if not more. The goal was simply to get all of the endings, not all of the escapes, therefore it's faster to never go through door 3.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
SmashManiac wrote:
What personally irks me however is that door 3 is never entered, and thus an entire set of puzzles is completely skipped. Personally, I would consider playing through all puzzle sections a requirement for full completion, and I find this omission disappointing. I understand that this is open for debate however since this is not tracked on the file select screen.
I get the want for door 3, but the goal was just all endings, not all escapes, and there's never any reason to go through door 3. As for the debate on Japanese vs English, I still stand with using English, that way most of the viewers can follow what's going on. I don't find the additional 3 hours to be a problem as the ability to follow along adds to the experience. If there turns out to be a Japanese only trick in the future, then absolutely I will update it, but until then I'm sticking with English.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Hey, so, I have question. I've been working on a NG+ run of Phoenix Wright, but I was wondering if a clean sram run would be acceptable. What I worry about is triviality. One thing that makes the NG+ run non-trivial is that your inputs have to be spot on for every single text box to maximize speed, but in any%, this is gone, so it does become about speed reading. My personal opinion would be it's *technically* submittable, only because it's got a definite end, and the interactive parts do require precision to get perfect. Much like a game with copious amounts of cutscenes. Yes, the bulk of the game may be cutscenes, but you still need to play fast in the parts where there aren't, which makes it a legitimate, if boring, speedrun.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Little update: I've finally finished setting up the sram, which took an insane amount of headaches as desmume doesn't like sram apparently. Now, I've just got to actually do the run, but I noticed something. It turns out pressing A or tapping the screen to get through text is a few frames faster than mindlessly holding B (most of the time this is exactly 6 frames faster per text box). This seems to be due to the fact that holding B interrupts animations playing, which causes delay, which therefore loses time. However, which one saves the most time: Pressing A or tapping the screen? Well, the answer is complicated, but long story short: it depends. Most of the time, tapping the screen saves a frame over pressing A, but it really depends on the animation that's playing, but there's another problem: that is, pressing to finish a text box, then pressing to go on to the next one. These are 2 distinct actions in the game, and it's not always faster to tap the screen to finish the text box, then tap again to go on to the next one. Sometimes it's faster to press A, sometimes not, and sometimes it's faster just for going to the next text box, sometimes not. Because of this, I had to test 4 combinations of presses: AA AT TA TT On every. Single. Text box. If I knew Lua, this would go by a lot faster, but I don't, so if anyone wants a crack at making me a script to test those, I'll give you coauthorship, as that testing is going to take up the vast majority of the run time. All I can really say for certain is that for the majority of the time (though not always), pressing A will generate a frame of lag versus tapping the screen.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Post subject: Desmume won't start from SRAM when I record a video
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
So, as the title says, I'm trying to record a movie which starts from SRAM, but it won't do it. It works completely fine if I'm not recording a movie, but reverts back to clean SRAM when I record. I've tried recording with SRAM, recording without SRAM, importing and then recording with SRAM. I've tried so many things, and it still happens the same: something about recording a movie wipes the SRAM clean, no matter if I select to start from it or not.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Entertainment wise, it's clearly lacking, but it does the job of finishing the game as fast as possible, and I don't see obvious improvements, so I'd say it's good to go for vaults.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Some new info for this long dormant game. I'm going ahead and doing a NG+, as it turns a 14 hour long game into a 2 hour one. I'm almost 2/3 of the way through prepping the last case, and my time is mainly spent routing the hell out of the game. Routing this game is a nightmare as while the court scenes are straight forward, the investigation stages are layered. What I would be interested in is abusing memory addresses to see if sequence breaks are possible. I'm not versed in DS hardware, so I would have a hard time searching for correct addresses, but some things that I imagine are stored separately are: *Background image. Perhaps a different value in the same address for each background, or different addresses for each background. *Character sprite on screen. Much like the background, it could be a value on one address for each character, or multiple addresses per character. *Certain story triggers. In routing the game, I found that only specific things need to happen in order to advance the story (duh). So, I wonder if the triggers are stored, or the resulting story progression moment is stored, and only activated when the conditions are met. I'm probably not going to go too crazy with memory abuses, simply focusing on getting the run done, but I'd love to see more knowledgeable people taking a look into it.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Post subject: How do you keep up motivation?
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
I love TASing, but I have many projects which I've started but never finished. Most of the time I just get bored. I'd love to see certain games done, so I'm wondering if anyone can tell how they keep up their motivation to keep going. Do you do it in chunks? Or does it really have to be a game that you've loved for years?
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Taking a trip back to my childhood, I've decided to begin TASing 40 Winks. As almost no one runs this game, and no one looks for breaks, I had to do a little digging for the current world speedrun: Link to video Physics from a speed point of view are a nightmare. I've done a little test routes from the bedroom to the first world, and the first world to the first level. As you can see, even though the movement is fairly optimized (it can probably be tweaked a little), the physics makes it look a little clunky. I haven't tested anything else, but I'd be interested to see what other experienced TASers can do with this game.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
We skip entire stories all the time, though. Hell, we'll even turn the story on its head so that it makes next to no sense. So, that's not an issue. It would be an issue if the SRAM violated some vault rule, and the movie wasn't entertaining.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
While the SRAM may not unlock any special mode, it is required for a time saver. It's possible that this breaks the vault rules, but I'm still playing the regular game, just, well, faster. Now, should the movie be entertaining, there's no problem on that end. I feel it shouldn't be rejected simply because the SRAM doesn't provide additional gameplay, but what could be done is have 2 categories: SRAM, and no SRAM. I've never seen this done, and the no SRAM probably runs into the 10+ hour range, so I'll leave all of that up to the judges.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
I've decided, after reading the sight rules carefully, that I will use SRAM to be able to fast forward through text. I'm currently recording a fresh game for validity, and if there's any problems with this, let me know.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
Well, I learned the pattern. If there's a lagged frame 3 frames before the play sign appears, then the earliest you can press A is 1 frame. If there's no lagged frame, then it's 2 frames.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
One thing I'll mention is that, most of the time, the earliest you can hit A to get through a text box is 1 frame before the play sign on the touch screen shows up. Sometimes it's 2 frames before. I haven't found the pattern.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
That's basically what I'm doing. I'm just worrying about the first game right now, and will move on to the others when this is done. I've been conflicted about submitting it, though, not because of entertainment, but because of site rules.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Reviewer, Player (198)
Joined: 3/2/2014
Posts: 71
Location: Colorado, USA
As far as I know, there's never any use for it. If you've played through the cases before, you were able to use B to speed through dialogs, but that would require SRAM to record.
No game is perfect, Everything can be broken. - Whoever was on the couch with dwangoAC and Weatherton at AGDQ 2014.