Oh, no, sorry, each image is generated from an average of every screenshot from a system. So it's a bunch of games. Not just one. I meant guess the system, not guess the game. Also, the game was meant to be played silently, to yourself. It's too trivial to ruin it for others. Again, I'm very sorry for the confusion. I guess you could say that generating confusion is my hobby. But say it silently, to yourself.
jimsfriend: No, sorry, you can't.
Don't guess anymore, but if people can explain why some of them have the weird grid effect, that would be pretty ok! I would like to know your theories.
Oh, no, sorry, each image is generated from an average of every screenshot from a system. So it's a bunch of games. Not just one. I meant guess the system, not guess the game.
Averaging all the frames from one game would be pretty cool and a fun little quiz. Some games (like Zelda 1) would work better if you could somehow leave off the ubiquitous menu display at the top.
How would one go about doing such a thing if they wanted to?
How would one go about doing such a thing if they wanted to?
If Lua has access to the pixel data being displayed, I'm sure it would take but just a few lines of Lua code to sum all the pixels of each frame to an array and then divide the values by the number of frames. Then it's a question of whether you can save the values in that array to an image file format (if Lua has no direct support, then you could simply output to a ppm (easiest, as it's an ascii-based format) or raw tga (binary format with an 18-byte header, but very simple), and then use a converter to convert it to a png).
I guess it's a game of "Find the head-up display!" Or checking screen resolutions, which narrows it down a lot for those custom handheld displays... I get this cool holographic-like effect looking at the pictures from different angles on a laptop.
The grids... Well, classic 2D game graphics are in grids, aren't they? It's probably considered safer to keep most of the edges of most of the background tiles dark in case they need to be placed on the surface, or to keep them from running together too much. That last one has to be from some new-fashioned 3D game.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Oh, no, sorry, each image is generated from an average of every screenshot from a system. So it's a bunch of games. Not just one.
Whoops, I didn't read this part until now. I read things out of order. Funny how Zero's life bar shows up so well, but then, he did get four games. I was debating whether the first one was Super Mario Land or a Legend of Zelda, but I guess they must both be in there, right? I want to see a Metroid in some of them, but I really don't know. The last one I'm starting to see a lot of Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time in. Did that one have a long frame war that produced a lot of screenshots for it? Then again, that's how those 3D games are, staring at someone's back and a skyline...
alden wrote:
Also, the game was meant to be played silently, to yourself.
But say it silently, to yourself.
But if we play it silently, to ourselves, how will we know if we won?
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
Second one ought to be Harmony of Dissonance. Correct?
/Or, Harmony had a different HUD. Aria of Sorrow instead.
...and Mega Man zero, And tons of other stuff, now that I take a closer look.
OK, yeah, so I was curious what a single movie average would look like. Here's the first level of SMB, more or less:
I don't know, kind of lame. I did this the carpal tunnel inducing way of repeatedly hitting frame advance and screenshot hotkey 1000 times.
Oh, and here's the magick part:
1 Download ImageMagick
2 Get a directory full of png's (or whatever) that are the same size
3 Go to that directory and type 'convert *.png -average output.png'
4 ???
5 Profit
It's pretty complicated.
Lua has no screenshot support "AFAICT" but Warp's proposed solution is actually pretty rad. It would also probably be a hell of a lot faster than waiting a friggin hour while ImageMagick averages 1000 pictures.
OK, someone who is smarter and has more time than me, let's see some more pictures!
Oh, and everyone wins the game. If you are stumped, look at the file names.
Well I am a curious fellow. So I gave this a shot but I couldn't quite overcome my dumbness. I got hung up on step 4. The program did something, but it wasn't read all the images and spit out an average that's for sure. I should have tried out like 5 or 6 screenshots before I went whole hog.
Anyway now I have 22,224 screenshots of Zelda 2. Maybe I'll make a fort out of them.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Here is an image averaging lua script (for FCEUX) I made. It's not perfect, but it works allright. Just enter start frame (startf) and end frame (endf) in the script while playing a movie. It is all frames between (and including) startf and endf that will be averaged. When the movie has reached frame endf, the emulator will be paused and the averaged image will be displayed on screen. Just make a screenshot to get the averaged image in .png-format.
I find it interesting that the pause screen and consultation with elders come through so strongly. Also that apparently the TAS spends a lot of time with only 1 unit of magic left!
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
averaged image will be displayed on screen. Just make a screenshot to get the averaged image in .png-format.
Oh god, no, no, don't do that.
Here is the same script running on FCEUX and VBA (with some minor tweaks for screen size):
FCEUX | VBA
Output it to a real format. Displaying it onscreen is a waste of the time you spend running it.
First 4000 frames of metroid any% made with a 4 line lua script that dumps screenshots.
Will check out new script soon! I was contemplating how to do something like that...
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Xkeeper wrote:
Output it to a real format. Displaying it onscreen is a waste of the time you spend running it.
This was more a case of my limited skill in lua programming. I realize that displaying it on screen is quite an ugly solution. I'm guessing the best solution would be to directly convert the array u, containing all information about the averaged picture, into an image file, without displaying it first. However, I don't know how to do that, or if a lua script even can do something like that (if someone knows, I would be very interested). However, I did know the commands to display it on screen, so I went with that.
I don't know, kind of lame. I did this the carpal tunnel inducing way of repeatedly hitting frame advance and screenshot hotkey 1000 times.
Oh, and here's the magick part:
1 Download ImageMagick
2 Get a directory full of png's (or whatever) that are the same size
3 Go to that directory and type 'convert *.png -average output.png'
4 ???
5 Profit
It's pretty complicated.
Lua has no screenshot support "AFAICT" but Warp's proposed solution is actually pretty rad. It would also probably be a hell of a lot faster than waiting a friggin hour while ImageMagick averages 1000 pictures.
OK, someone who is smarter and has more time than me, let's see some more pictures!
Oh, and everyone wins the game. If you are stumped, look at the file names.
Kind of underwhelming!
FCEUX | VBA 
Output it to a real format. Displaying it onscreen is a waste of the time you spend running it.
Will check out new script soon! I was contemplating how to do something like that...
