Posts for zaphod77

Posted: 12/17/2021 7:54 PM
(Edited: 12/17/2021 8:42 PM)

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

Note that a lot of the smooth motion tricks from NES version don't work at all here. BUT you can still slip past enemies at times. notably, you can walk upwards past a trapped enemy on the left side to set it free without getting hurt. This is because of the way the game scans from upper left to lower right. When the enemy is higher, it's scanned first, and doesn't see you next to it. then you move up, and are now next to it. but because it's been scanned already, it doesn't kill you. then when you are scanned again before the enemy, you can move upwards again . Then when the enemy is scanned again once again you are not next to it, so no explosion If an enemy is directly above you, or to the left of you, it will blow up when it sees you next to it because it's scanned first. but If you are above or left of it, you are scanned first, and can take a step away before it sees you. enemies scan for you before they move. you can appear to walk right next to an enemy, provided you are above or left if it, because it scans before it moves next to you again, and then you can move before it sees you again. Many levels created by other players for this game (with level editors) depend on this all important behavior to even be solvable. Cave F showcases this in the TAS, where he keeps slipping past enemies over and over again when it seems like he should be dead. but with framestep and knowledge of the cave scan, it's clear how this works.

Posted: 11/15/2021 4:38 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

that version i mentioned IS an official release, sold in stores. it loads faster that the tape. i can provide the game for you if you want. but turns out the fastest loading original is the first star software PAL release. but it runs just fine on ntsc. game code for all releases of bd is confirmed identical. ftp://8bitfiles.net/archives/c64-preservation-project/g64/b/boulder_dash%5Bfirst_star_1984%5D%28pal%29%28%21%29.zip the game does not actually function correctly on PAL anyway. intermission 3 is impossible, though this does not prevent progress.

Posted: 11/15/2021 3:12 PM
(Edited: 2/25/2023 8:05 AM)

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

Seems there is still debate 1) It must be possible in theory to verify the run by replacing the keyboard and joystick inputs with a bot in theory. This disqualifies ram injection/vdrive/virtual device traps. 2) The fastest loading original should be preferred. Cartridge is always fastest, but if it's not available for cart, usually disk is faster. But taking advantage of a glitch only present in an earlier release. 3) Format conversion was never intended to be possible. as programs were usually copy protected. It sometimes is still doable without extra peripherals. There are a number of tape to disk transfer utilities. The action replay cart, for example has a built in "novaload transfer" routine that will save a novaload tape to disk for later loading. many cracking groups wrote their own tape transfer utilities. But you would often usually need to crack the protection. transferrig form tape to disk can speed load times. transferring from disk to tape is pointless. transferring to cart is impossible under our guidelines. 4) while glitches are generally fair game, glitches that are only present when the game runs on the wrong video game system, and affect gameplay beyond the 50/60 hz change are not fair game, and mean you must use the video system where the glitch is not present, unless the game was officially released in that territory. 5) i still disagree on the decision that running a game that was not released in ntsc territory in ntsc is a valid choice. It's not a valid choice because real people don't have that option. their real tvs back in the day can only handle their own video standards. This is also to provide parity with console releases, where PAL versions must be tased on PAL emulation, admn NTSC versions must be tased on ntsc emulations. If we are allowed to tas pal released c64 games on NTSC settings, we would also allowed to tas pal NES game son NTSC settings. The fact that many games run on both is not a valid argument. c64 preservation (https://rittwage.com/c64pp/dp.php?pg=database) is an authority on if an original is PAL or NTSC for games released on disk. Look up the game there if it's a disk image. I will throw some examples. Great Giana SIsters. if you look it up there, ther'es only a (PAL) version. that's a very strong clue that the game is PAL. it was neve released in the USA at all. Ollies Folies. It notes that the loader crashes on NTSC, but the game doesn't appear to be PAL. NTSC is correct for this game. Encounter. The disk release is NTSC, as it's by synapse software. all novagen releases of the game are PAL, because they crash on NTSC intentionally. the game was developed on PAL, but got a commercial NTSC port. The novagen tape orginals only run on PAL, so they must be TASed there. There IS a ROM difference, in this case. Uridium. the game has pal releases, as well as a worldwide release by mindscape. NTSC is correct. It turns out most of Andrew Braybrook's games (Uridium, Gribbly's Day Out, Alleykat, etc.) account for pal/ntsc differences in their coding. Whichever is faster should be used, and it's probably NTSC. Any game that accounts for differences is a glabal release, even if not actually sold as such. For uridium he outright states that the us and europe releaes are identical. Thing on a Spring. there's no PAL after it, s it got an NTSC release by Epyx. TAS that release there, or other tape releases on pal, if it's faster. Working out pal/ntsc is not as hard as it seems. If you can't find a disk release of the game, unless it was made by a known US company (Epyx, Synapse,Activision non lucasfilm, br0derbund, etc.), the game is most likely PAL. If you CAN find a disk orginal, and it works fine on NTSC, it's PROBABLY a NTSC game. high voltage sid collection is a fairly authoritative resource. you simply punch the game title into the sid search, and usually it will come up. there's usually enough info to make a reasonable determination. That said, it's still not perfect (it say Commando is PAL, where a listen and compare with the arcade says otherwise, and c64 preservation confirms a US release from data east).

Posted: 11/15/2021 1:42 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

Most of the c64 longplays around are in fact tool assisted, but they are not usually optimized.

Posted: 11/15/2021 1:38 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

The SUper Boulder Dash release by Electronic Arts loads considerably faster. assuming bizhawk supports .g64 images, it should boot. if not you can convert this .g64 to a .d64 and it should still work. there's fault in the protection checker where if it fails it will keep retrying, and then continue and load the game anyway. whoops! This is without a fastload cart. if action replay v5 NTSC is attached as well as the .d64, nearly any disk release of the game will will load very rapidly, and faster than this one. But with no external hardware, this one loads fastest. It is indeed the same game, just with an extra EOA logo on the title screen.

Posted: 7/30/2021 10:18 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

And now it's been fully documented. https://tetris.wiki/Bloxeed yes this means starting a second player and using their inputs to advance the item seed to get moar flicky is probably optimal. :)

Posted: 6/29/2021 3:33 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

For those who don't get the joke, this game can be perfected unassisted, and is thus trivial to TAS. Each of the trick shot levels can be beaten with a max power shot in a specific direction. No english required. This TAS does use english on some of the levels, though.

Posted: 3/6/2021 9:10 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

welp looks like TAS has been beaten RTA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25hqxoTIqz0 There's a crazy glitch here at work. have fun working out how to TAS it faster. :)

Posted: 1/26/2021 6:36 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

I have more info about the RNG for pieces and powerups, fo those who want to tas. The 1000 piece sequence is generated at game start. Every piece the rng is also called to see what powerup it would have. The powerup depends on the height of the stack, ignoring the outer six columns. every so many frames of active playtime when nut using a powerup item, the game will introduce a new powerup. So by varying how long it takes to place your pieces, and where you place them, you can manipulate what powerups you get. Flicky and Satellite are the best powerups, and to max the game out quickly you want as many of them as you can get. Under TAS conditions it's easy to clear the screen with satellite, and make tetris bravos with flicky. Here's a start. Place the first six pieces such that the red meter fills just before the third piece hits the ground, and that it fills the second time just before the 6th piece hits the ground, and there's a tetris hole on the right. This will give you a flicky powerup in the I piece. This will get you from level 0 to 1, and allows you to make at least 2 tetris bravos, and maybe three under TAS conditions. 2 is doable RTA.

Posted: 11/13/2020 5:34 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

That is a truly hilarious use of ends input early. :)

Posted: 10/29/2020 2:25 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

Actually, the space invaders syndrome doesn't matter. even if the bullet can't appear, you will still get the rank increase! also note that preventing enemy shots by being too close to them itself increases rank, though it may not matter if the autofire is jacked to the max.

Posted: 6/27/2020 10:36 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

Still waiting on bloxeed. here's a decent RTA superplay to give you an idea on what tricks you need to max it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L5gA1DMn2Dg&t=18s The slow play speed for much of the tas before level 15 is to manipulate the powerups, which are different depending on which pieces get them. It's clearly improvable under TAS conditions (get more flickys, get more bravos at 10x points), and can probably be maxed out sub 10 minutes. i recommend using the japanese rom though, because it allows every frame autofire by alternating two rotation buttons, as opposed to that version, which only provides 1 button, allowing firing every other frame.

Posted: 5/12/2020 5:56 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

This is awesome. I was always wondering if it was possible to avoid waking Crateria. seems it's possible after all. :) I still want to see someone avoid waking Crateria RTA.

Posted: 4/3/2020 9:46 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

glad this was fixed. in case anyone else doesn't realize, this is orders of magnitude more difficult to do than it looks. try yourself in real time. :)

Posted: 10/15/2019 7:10 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

Anyone who's actually played this know the PAIN of the random crushers, many of which can only be passed with a bit of luck. thisis impressive, and worthy of moons. even without the music.

Posted: 10/9/2019 12:56 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

to actually do this as fast as possible, you need to maximize goal per piece on average. Back to back tetris (a tetris followed by another tetris) grants a positively HUGE amount of goal, and i believe more of them will speed up later levels. Additionally, t-spinning should preserve back to back. I agree that the play control of this version may be lacking, but i'm just not impressed, and think it can be routed better.

Posted: 9/19/2019 9:57 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

well i want ones that literally skip the entire game completely to end up in a separate branch from ones like the one this obsoleted. :) you got a better suggestion? very few other movies have zero gameplay. :)

Posted: 9/7/2019 6:04 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

I think this is a new type of branch. 0% :) 0% means that literally all gameplay is skipped. This allows normal game end glitches, that are triggered at a later point in the game than right at the start to not be obsoleted (and the one that this obsoleted is pretty awesome).

Posted: 9/3/2019 6:16 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

There is up to one supershot powerup per stage. some do not have any, though (they will either give a smart bomb, or just a third spinny thing). Note that collecting the double shot does not prevent you from collecting the supershot powerup if you stall. So on stage 1 you can collect both the double shot and a supershot if you stall enough (but it may lose too much time). but on stages where none are collected, IF a supershot powerup is available on the stage, a small stall to get it may be worthwhile. you can get also supershot powerups by manipulating one during the bonus stage. but only the first one collected counts. this was proven in the existing video. also, if you die with no supershots, you will be given one on your next life. This may be of use during a boss fight if you run out of super shots. it is never possibly any use otherwise, because you will have manipulated one out of the chance stage. super shots take a long time to fire, so i believe they are only worthwhile when used on stuff that becomes invulnerable to normal shots but not to them. (like turrets) I could be wrong, though. You can have four by the time of the first turret boss if you delay enough on all three levels. this lets you use one on each turret. but it may be faster to not stall on level 1, and take out one with normal shots, taking turns between supershots. you should easily get back to four without much delay for second turret boss. again you can use four, but also test using only three to see if it's faster. I'm pretty sure it's possible to get at least four by each turret boss. i also believe that it may help to use some on the final boss and tag it just before the eye closes. I'm positive that TAS can be improved, and that super shots are the key. You can NOT destroy all three spaceships with one super shot, in my experience. At most one will explode, and they are near enough to you that normal shots are faster overall i think. but this sort of stuff needs to be tested. super shots should be tested against bosses to see when they save time.

Posted: 9/3/2019 5:01 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

I believe maximum score can be a valid goal in the following cases. 1) game has no infinite leech and has a kill screen. in this case, score by reaching the kill screen at all, then by score, then by time. THis is what the Bongo TAS does. it reaches the kill screen, scoring as much as believed possible. If someone can reach a later screen and score more, that obsoletes regardless of time. if same screen is reached, greater score obsoletes regardless of time. If same score and screen are reached, and time is faster, this obsoletes. simple rules. Donkey Kong arcade is the same way. there's a kill screen, and limited live so infinite leach is not possible. so it can be score attacked. The RTA competition for this game is a score attack that reaches kill screen. TAS can certainly do better with luck manipulation (for more points from hammer smashes), better reflexes, and more point pressing. lose all but one life on the screen that gives the most points. If not entertaining enough, this is vaultable. If it's entertaining it goes to moons. 2) alternatively, if the game has an end, and it cannot be counterstopped, and infinite leech is not possible, maximum score while beating the game is a valid goal. it may or may not be entertaining. I'm not sure if such a game should be vaultable. This is often same as 100%. Endless games are not valid for max score, IMHO. Games where infinite leech is possible are also not valid for max score. I'd personally rule that 1 and 2 have it as valid goal, but only 1 is vaultable, with 2 as a moon if sufficiently entertaining. Note that for games that DO have the ability to counterstop, fastest counterstop is a valid goal that is well defined. Sega Tetris (any of the arcade versions) is the classic example. But superhuman skill is not required to do it for this game. It is entertaining and fast if you are trying to max score only. Should such a TAS be vaultable? I'm not sure. It should be non trivial, and show superhuman skill or luck manipulation. If so, i'd consider it for vault if it's not entertaining.

Posted: 8/27/2019 4:48 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

Here are things that were commonly done on the real c64. 1) snapshot carts. this converted a protected game to either a single or dual file backup copy of the game. this didn't always work, but when it did you get something that loads much faster than the original usually. they also have a bonus of setting the rng to a known state. These are non legit, but were applied to original disks and tapes. you can perfect this trick using a c64 emulator. this is legit because a god could freeze the game at the exact right time. using emulator specific features, i can TAS the freezing process. :) but if the freeze button was pressed at the exact right time, identical results can be created on real hardware. Of course many games don't require such precision to freeze properly, such as Mr. Do. (you just wait for the static title screen and press the freeze button.) 2) tape to disk transfers. there were c64 side utilities that could do this. novaload in particular was often converted this way. with an added fast loader, again it could load faster. Again there are PC side tools to do this faster, but this is something that WAS done on the real system. so we have some questions. 1) is attaching a speeder cart (commonly done with a real machine at the time) acceptable for speeding up load times? The standard available carts for NTSC are Epyx Fast Load, and AR 5.0. europe has a much greater variety. I vote yes, when it helps. 2) is using freezer snapshots okay provided it was done with an original? if so this can significantly decrease loading time. I vote yes, provided that it was done from an original, and it was done at the earliest possible safe freeze point. 3) is crunching said snapshot okay? this can be (and was often) done on the real c64, to create a smaller file, at the expense of decrunching time. generally, this is faster to get to the title screen. I believe yes, and that it's okay to use the PC side tool, because c64 side tools existed that could do the same thing. but it's understandable to rule that only c64 side tools can be used. 4) is using the vorpal utility disk to convert said freezer snapshot, along with the vorpal loader okay? this creates a .g64 image that would work on real unmodified hardware, if written back. This image will load at 25 times the speed of the original file. I would again say yes. 5) is saving an action replay snapshot in warp*25 format (equivalent to vorpal) okay? these again can be made to boot without the cart i think, but can boot easier with the cart. again .g64 image is required, and it's doable on the real computer. again this is a 25X speedup compared to the original loading time of the snapshot. I say maybe? 6) is using tape to disk transfers okay? Again i say yes, provided the game actually works and loads faster this way (possibly with the help of a cart speeder) 7) is memory injection okay? I'd say no, because it cannot be done on real hardware of the time period. easyflash and/or backbit can sorta do this now, but they were not available during the commercial lifetime of the system. 8) is non true drive emulation okay? again, no, because you can't do it on real hardware. 9) if it ever gets emulated, is using a sd2iec+easyflash jiffydos cart okay? If it is ever emulated, it provides a 20x speedup. Maybe. but it's unlikely to ever get emulated. 10) are REU loads okay? this IS emulated, so if the above tricks are okay, then super fast loading the onefile from an REU should also be okay, as that is doable on period hardware.

Posted: 8/20/2019 2:34 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

TO the best of our understanding there is a finite amount of ponts available in the game, and a specific level is the kill screen. this makes maximum score a valid goal. If someone finds a way past this screen (or past the previos one without bonus skip) but discovers that a later screen is deadly, then a tas that goes to that screen should obsolete this. a tas that scores more than this one and reaches the same screen should also obsolete it. Any% (reaching killscreen as fast as possible) is not likely to be any more entertaining at all, and the extra scoring tricks add to the entertainment. Additionally, even reaching the current kill screen is not trivial. I think this is definitely a valid TAS. If it is discovered that there is no kill screen, than a tas should go until there is no new content and no new difficulty increase, and obsolete this. But i see no danger of that happening. No one has been able to beat 7-6 without bonus, and no one has been able to beat 7-7 without it either because it's not possible to get bonus on two levels in a row. it seems absolute. but feel free to work on this. :) it LOOKS like you should be able to back jump on the starting platform of 7-7 and let the dino pass under, because it seems to start sunk into the floor, but i'm guessing this doesn't actually work.

Posted: 8/5/2019 7:27 PM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

This skips the whole darn game. :) There was one other TAS that skipped close to that much. it was the one where you could manipulate the game ending item to be right by the start and just blindly dig it up. Maybe there should be a "skips 99% of the gameplay or more" tag? :)

Posted: 8/5/2019 3:01 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

btw, if any duck other than the last one is missed, the game delays while it scoots the hit indicators over, playing a cute little sound. this is unlikely to ever get made back in better RNG by missing an earlier duck, because of the number of frames the sound effects lasts and delays the end of round. yes this means that there is an automatic delay for letting duck 9 fly away, because the hit indicator for duck 10 will be scooted to the left.

Posted: 8/4/2019 3:34 AM

zaphod77

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Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 343

anything that is not revealed with cursory testing probably doesn't matter. that example of the enemies moving slower on ntsc, for example is easily revealed. flickering that's not present on the other shows up quite easily. bubble bobble intro is the same issue. it drops to roughly half speed. this is not rocket science. :) really arcane "only possible under TAS conditions with one video system" stuff is probably fair game. But if there are issues a normal player would notice, then you need to use the correct standard. there is also a system to do perfect freezes of the game, to set up for direct ram injection. it's a royal pain, but i know how to do it. you need to set a breakpoint at the load address of the game, then set up a loop elsewhere in memory and resume there, then freeze, then change the loop to point back to the start address. this technique will usually create a single load that can be direct injected. but again you can't do this on real hardware. also, there is an NTSC version of AR v5.0. i'm not sure if it uses ramload, though (which is the ultra fast loading solution that spools entire tracks into the cart ram so they can load fast interleave independent). there is no NTSC ar 6.0 but the 5.0 ROM is commonly available. While nothing about the .g64 format precludes use of kernal load, generally stuff that uses kernal load is compatible with .d64 format, so that's what it's usually found on, to save space. that's why i said a fastload cart will rarely speed up a g64 significantly. There are exceptions. An example of a disk original on .g64 that is significantly sped up by jiffyDOS is Encounter. The g64 format is required to store the twin sector (one sector is stored twice on disk with different values in it) to pass the copy protection, but once that's passed, it block reads the main program into memory one sector at a time with standard block read code, which fastload does not accelerate, but JiffyDOS does. No cart speeder that I know of accelerates block read. But licensing restrictions are an issue for JiffyDOS, even though the roms can be obtained. The licensing issue prohibits jiffyDOS. While every other speeder cost money as well, JiffyDOS is still being actively sold new. That's the issue. for US, FastLoad was THE standard cart speeder, and it was EVERYWHERE. The AR cart was often cloned, and is considered a standard speeder. there are also other aftermarket ROMs with speeders that are NOT JiffyDOS, but they tend to have compatibility issues. examples EXOS Beast System (pretty much same as EXOS) 64'er ROM 1514 Flash (earlier than diffydos, undumped as far as I know) StarDOS (undumped, as far as I know, faster than 1541 flash) Only the last two ever made it to the usa, and they were not common.