Well the thing about the end is that if you want to leave it at the credits, you have to let the ending play out. It lasts longer based on how many yellow gems you collect. Avoiding them will technically make the movie shorter as the ~6 seconds from every gem will be more than the time used to avoid them.
Oh, and the ending will abruptly cut off once you run out of yellow gems for it.
I don't think it should impact the run, since the focus is on in-game time. But you can leave the run remaining for the ending level and then end the movie after selecting the credits level.
This of course opens up the possibility of a 100% run, which a nice and fast game like this deserves, but the regular run should probably come first. ;-)
This would be a terribly long and boring 100% run.
I'm impressed at how much luck manipulation was done. This game usually takes weeks, but you managed to find monsters that were some sort of gods.
Yes vote for how much you destroyed this game.
Here's a possible screenshot:
[URL=http://imageshack.us][/URL]
I was using Jabo DX8 and I didn't notice anything besides the already-known problem in Rolling Rock. Of course it may look quite different in frame advance, but nothing I saw was really unplayable.
Ok, I did more RAM finding, here's a bigger list. All are unsigned short.
Lots of Stuff
009DD7E2
LUNAR / Toadly Raw / TAURUS / Moley Cow / MERCO / Pirate Clancer in Trapped / Inner Struggle
7 Clancer Kids / Counterattack
009E0C7A
All 7 kids and one boss later on
Chilly Dog
009DDB12
Marina Clone
009DF162
Cerebus Alpha / Sasquatch Beta
009E6F4A
Phoenix Gamma
009E6422
Final Battle
009DD97A
Also found
Marina's Current HP
009D8B62
I didn't go back to find some of the earlier bosses, but you can probably find it in one of the above addresses. If you still need anything else just let me know.
I also now have a saved game with all levels if you want it. PM me where and I'll email it.
Migen Sr. HP
009E2792
Unsigned Short
Yeah, it counts down from 3 to 0, not that interesting
Migen Jr. Related?
00A305C7
Byte
This changes whenever he's hit. I couldn't find a traditional HP value, so this is what I found after looking a bunch.
Chilly Dog
009DDB12
Unsigned Short
Starts with 500 HP, counts down to 0
LUNAR!!
009DD7E2
Unsigned Short
Starts at 150, goes to 0
Cerebus Alpha
009E6F4A
Unsigned Short
This jumps around a bit between forms, but it lasts for the whole fight.
Could you post a saved game with all levels accessible? I don't have anything past world 3 atm.
So regarding the image stuff that means that you could use the following formula to find the file size for an image:
Image resolution x bits per pixel = image file size (bits)
800 x 600 x 32 = 15360000
Somewhat, GIF, JPEG, and PNG are used because they compress the image, and there's usually some header data in everything, but this type of approach might work for certain BMP files.
IIRC there was a modified plugin specifically for Mischief Makers, or does it still have those problems? Have you tried Rice?
Also, don't stress TOOOO much about frame counts. Ultimately to a human viewer, 3 frames can't even be noticed. Perfection is a good thing to shoot for, but I'd also like to see a run published within 3 years. ;-)
I'll try searching for some HP values when I get a chance. I have a ton of work atm, but I get a break after Wednesday.
Which of those are most important for now?
There's also the issue of if the HP locations depend on the run, but we'll deal with that if it comes up.
Making insignificant new publications (such as 32-frame improvements) decreases the signal-to-noise ratio, causing that the people who want to keep up-to-date with publications and to follow the front page, will lose interest in doing so. I want new publications to be radical.
Perhaps a redesign of the front page could help this out. Have separate lists for improvements and new movies. The improvements list would probably move a bit faster than the new movies one. Maybe have a way to put radical improvements to a movie in another list or on the new movies list. This way movies that are a big deal can be shown more prominently than minor improvements, which are still good to have.
This may be slightly off-topic, but I somewhat dislike the "movies posted on these three days", because the number of movies on the front page fluctuates wildly sometimes. There's days when I've seen just 3 movies and days with a whole bunch.
Yes, I know SNES9X is the emu of choice here, but I cannot stand it. I used ZSNES 1.51 for this.
zsnes is accepted here, it just hasn't been in much use because the addition of frame advance is fairly recent and most TASers have learned SNES9X before it was added to zsnes.
The rules page says 1.42, but I'm not sure if that's because of 1.51 incompatibilities or a non-updated rules page. May want to look into that before starting a run you might want to submit. Or just replay the movie every now and then in 1.42 and hope it still works.
The GBA has problems with lag. BIG problems. Then again, I'm not sure if the arrange mode would eliminate the fuss about going through all the levels twice.
I know that the triblade isn't available until mid to late in the game. The magic isn't anything spectacular I recall. The only magic that's great in a normal run is the cyclone and dragon, but I don't think either would shorten boss fights.
The bracelet does more damage for better armor and more damage up close. The best final boss battle involves gold armor and up-close spamming of the bracelet.
Also the pre-bronze daggers are ridiculously dangerous up close because you can fire one every few frames.
There are also a few shortcuts in the first half of level 2 that require tricky jumps.
Professional does add difficulty, but it also adds enemies, which cause lag like mad. You might wanna try killing some where convenient to reduce lag.
If you did do a whole game run... There is a way to beat Bowser right?
I have seen one of the kids stomped (Wendy IIRC, the one with the pipes and two decoys.) so I assume they all can be beaten, and I would guess the Big Boo and Razor bosses can be too, and if they can not, they just would not be placed in game.
Iggy/Larry - can commit suicide, not sure if it can be more interesting (Seen it happen)
Pipe koopas (2) - succeptable to automatic mario, as you mentioned.
Big Boo - It's been done at least once, these are fairly interesting so having more than one is a plus
Reznor - I believe it can be modified, it'll be tricky to do auto-mario for it, but when it's done it'll probably be fairly awesome.
Bowser/Wall Koopas/Ludwig - Not sure if their levels can be modified. Bowser is a big sprite with a few effects too. Bowser's health can be reduced as well.
If all else fails, we could just have the player defeat Bowser. Don't tell me you're that lazy.
Bosses aren't the only issue though. Water levels don't seem practical for an AM level. Another issue is the choice of whether to include semi-automatic mario levels as well. (This involves the user holding a combination of buttons, usually some combination of B, Y and Down.)
Holding Y may make water levels a bit more interesting. If all else fails I can cut levels out.
Perhaps there might be enough interest for a TASvideos joint production? Ie. Numerous collaborators go to work in making a new SMW hack which is all self played?
I've been thinking about this for a while and I can't seem to get it out of my head. I've thought about it a bit and envision a hack that recreates the whole game of SMW with self-playing levels. Obviously we have to make some concessions for sake of actually having the levels play themselves, but if each level kept to the theme of the original game, it would be an interesting new way to experience SMW.
Well, to show you what I've been thinking of, I'll show my WIP of the first level.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z714Ya8mxsw
Please post feedback either here or by the video.
I have sent a message to a couple of the authors, but it looks like most of the ones on youtube are stolen from nicovideo.jp and reposted. (The audio desyncs usually stem from this)
I suppose if someone who speaks Japanese has a nicovideo account, they could go ask around there and be a bit more likely to get a response from the real author. It's apparently a meme over there so there may be multiple authors.
In the meantime, I've been playing around with making my own, I'll share it when I finish the first level.
As a CS person, lemme assure you that this is much easier than a checkers AI. The predicted next outcome can be evaluated without thinking ahead more than one move.
There's actually a more difficult problem in choosing the team to use.
This game's graphics and sound just scream GENESIS.
The TAS is entertaining and has a good technical sense in minimizing lag from giant pixels.
Nice improvement.
I also drop about a second in Ikana Canyon to pick up a fairy to replenish my health, otherwise the last fifteen minutes of my movie would have been ruined by annoying bleeping.THANK YOU!!!
Are TASs created from SRAM allowed on this site? TT makes a more entertaining run in my opinion.
In nearly all cases no. An exception was made for the Chrono Trigger New Game+ TAS, but that was more of a random demo and not a real run. I don't see it being done for this game.
Is there or will there ever be functionality to do so on Mupen?
IIRC, mupen can start a movie from a savestate. But this is pretty much not allowed for runs due to issues about hacked save data.
Are soft resets such as the one from okaygo's modification allowed?
They are accepted for all other consoles, so I don't see why not.
Are codes allowed? A few that come to mind are maximum upgrades or all balloons are blue.
Codes are on a game-by-game basis. Using codes to make the game easier isn't really in the spirit of TASvideos. I don't see it making the game any more entertaining, and would probably make it less so. I would highly doubt this would be accepted for DKR.
Hmm, that .ips Dromicieus posted loaded as a ".xxx". Is that a computer error? If yes, please post the .ips here. If no, how does one decompress a .xxx?
The page makes mention of WinIPS, so it's probably just a renamed IPS file. Google Translate confirms this.
On a more important note, the patch is for the SMB nes rom. I tried it out and it's one of those super-hard hacks that's only possible using glitches.
-_-
I know this may seem like a dumb question, but does the duration of the cinematic change if the angle is different? (That is to say, it's faster or anything in a certain viewpoint?)
Sorry if it's a dumb question :X
You have too little confidence. That is exactly the type of question you have to ask while TASing.
The only thing I can think of is maybe some camera angles create a few more frames of lag because of what's in the background. The Kokiri sword doesn't have much going on in the BG, but it still might be worth investigating the amount of frames that follow the two screens there.
Here's a video called "Mario Lecture". It shows off a bunch of odd bugs in the game, including one I thought impossible - jumping straight through a brick. Who here speaks Japanese and can translate this?
Most of these tricks are on the SMB tips page. There's some really weird stuff that's possible with the SMB engine, but a lot of it just isn't applicable to a TAS. There are some obscure hacks that require some of this though. (See the AIR hack for instance)
I propose a TAS be made that beats all levels as fast as possible, then beats bowser's castle (If this is also self-winning) by having movie end occur right after pressing the button to go into the level.
I'm on it, just as soon as I can find the IPS patch for it. I've actually searched around quite a bit, but no luck so far.
Will it be a low% run or a all Karabon run (Since you can skip 1) or 100%(All powerups/karabons etc)
I had planned to do a low% run, but abandoned it due to lack of interest. I didn't think the game was too suited for a TAS once I did some more of it.
If anyone else wants to attempt this, I'd watch your test runs and such, but I'm not gonna do this run.
IIRC The S-Rank guide says that the level clock does run during the pause screen, so accidentally pressing pause will ruin a potential run. This doesn't effect a TAS at all though, since we can pause the emulator.
It looks like that value refers to "Play Time" on a file. It does start incrementing at the title screen, but is loaded with the file. It is the original data as well, because you can set it and reset the time spent in-game.
Even though it displays time in milliseconds, that doesn't mean it tracks it in them. It's usually simpler to keep track of frames and convert it to time when it's displayed. So far I haven't found an address that directly corresponds to level time in frames, but I have done some experimenting with delaying the B-button to grab the end star, a frame and then two frames to test the granularity, and it does indeed look like 1/60th of a second.
I'll probably try again tomorrow, I've found a few (possible) frame counters, but haven't had their values match the level time yet.
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