Posted: 2/16/2011 4:10 AM
Post subject: Want tutor for TAS in Berkeley Calif
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JohnInBerkeley
Joined: 2/16/2011
Posts: 2
Hello, I the father of a 12 year old boy in Berkeley, Calif. He plays a lot of Nintendo Mario and Luigi games. He wants to make speed runs. I am unable to help him understand this TAS system, as I can't understand it. I'm not a computer person. What I would like is to hire someone who does understand, and lives in the area, so that we could get some expert assistance in house as it were. My son has Aspergers and we homeschool, so it would be like a paid tutor thing, someone preferably with experience working with autistic kids and also teaching computer programming and expertise in this TAS thing. Thanks. John
Posted: 2/16/2011 4:54 AM
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Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Does he want to do speedruns, or TASes? While both require a deep understanding of the game in question, speedruns require more gaming skill, while TASes require more planning and understanding of how computers and programs work. Speedruns are basically playing the game normally and trying to do the best you possibly can; TASes take a much more systematic approach with a lot of trial and error, "playing" one frame at a time and trying every plausible method of tackling each obstacle in the game so that the best method is always used. Best of luck to you. I neither TAS nor speedrun, as I have entirely too many hobbies already.
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Posted: 2/16/2011 6:55 PM
(Edited: 2/16/2011 10:55 PM)
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Kirkq
Player (208)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
(I was also skeptical of the post, but I chose to respond in the case that it was a legitimate request.) We have had a few motivated 12-13 year old kids in the past who have produced good runs. The way most of us got involved was to simply pick up the emulator and start working, which might be difficult for someone so young. If you truly are interested, the best way to get started is to just dive right in. Most of us simply started out by download the emulators and recording some input. Our site generally tries to be supportive of constructive questions, but we hope you look through the documentation and have at least tried to fix your own issues before deferring to us. The documentation doesn't always cover everything, but we would hope that it is tried before asking someone to go out of their way to help. Start here: http://tasvideos.org/TASHowTo.html Of particular note: This site will not supply roms (games), or tell you where to get the roms. We only supply the emulators used to play the roms. Downloading games is a questionably legal activity, but many of the games we play are old and many of us own copies of them anyway. It is not illegal to rip your own copy of your own game to your computer, but some of us don't have the device to do that, so we get them online. This site also does not support many of the newer generation systems (PS2,PS3, Gamecube, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360) yet because the emulators are not advanced enough. With regard to coding: Coding is something that takes a while to learn, and we probably can't offer the effort necessary to help someone to learn from scratch. Coding isn't terribly essential to many games. Many games can be performed well simply by monitoring the character X position, which is pretty easy to access through the emulator. Just to give some perspective on the tutoring. We currently have around 1700 published movies on this site, produced by around 300-400 individuals. Most of the non-Japanese population that produces TASes get them published here, so it is probably safe to assume that the number of people in the United States and capable of helping is less than that. A large portion of the skilled TASers are over 18 and either in college or holding a full time job. The odds of someone being nearby and interested are extremely low. This is probably more of a hobby than a learning experience until one starts advanced coding to perform more difficult runs. Hope I was able to supply some useful information. - Kirk
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Posted: 2/16/2011 10:41 PM
Post subject: amount of sense
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antd
Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
i like how the first post makes little to no sense
Posted: 2/17/2011 5:45 PM
Post subject: replies to all
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JohnInBerkeley
Joined: 2/16/2011
Posts: 2
Thanks all for your replies. I'll try to respond. to antd & Derakon) - my son does regular speed runs already. I get the terminology mixed up. It's the Tool Assisted Speedrun videos that he admires but doesn't know how to do. to Kirkq) - from http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources.html I tried to download NES FCEUX - saw three choices: * FCEUX 2.1.4a win32 Binary * FCEUX 2.1.4a win32 Binary - Windows 2000/98 * FCEUX 2.1.4a src The only one looked any familiar was the second one, the one for windows 98 and 2000 (although son's computer runs Vista) - but when tried to unzip that download, got a virus warning. ?? I'm just lost here. I don't even know what a port is. Thanks for the clarification re the probable few number of TAS knowledgable people in the US. Wouldn't you think though, that the bay area would have a few of those here? And I would expect a tutor to be in college though, that shouldn't be a problem. I'm in Berkeley. I had a student from UCSF write me a PM in response to my original post. I didn't know how to respond to him really until I read your clarifications, Thanks. I want to suggest to the UCSF student that he (or anyone) might be able to scrape up enough eager Asperger gamers like my son to be able to host a profitable Saturday workshop/s for semi-computer literate gamers like us. And thanks for explaining the rom thing. First I had heard of it /them
Posted: 2/17/2011 10:12 PM
(Edited: 2/17/2011 10:41 PM)
Post subject: Re: replies to all
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Kirkq
Player (208)
Joined: 7/7/2006
Posts: 798
Location: US
JohnInBerkeley wrote:
to Kirkq) - from http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources.html I tried to download NES FCEUX - saw three choices: * FCEUX 2.1.4a win32 Binary * FCEUX 2.1.4a win32 Binary - Windows 2000/98 * FCEUX 2.1.4a src The only one looked any familiar was the second one, the one for windows 98 and 2000 (although son's computer runs Vista) - but when tried to unzip that download, got a virus warning. ?? I'm just lost here. I don't even know what a port is.
You won't really need to deal with computer port issues, as the emulators do not connect to the internet. (EDIT: If you did indeed mean software port, it may be aware that you previously downloaded the wrong version for your operating system.) Your virus software needs to not block anything regarding the emulator. You want the FCEUX 2.1.4a win32 Binary. (Not the windows 2000/98 one) It seems you have extremely overprotective virus software on your computer that you need to bypass to open it. It seems you aren't terribly proficient with computers, so getting started may prove to be difficult. These files are 'binary executable' files, which basically means once you unzip them, they are ready to run. Overprotective virus protection is afraid of unknown executables (.exe files) because it contains executable program code. (An executable could be a malicious virus, but any normal working program is also an executable. A word document or text file cannot be a virus unless you set your computer up to run it as an executable.) The point is that you should always be wary of .exe files you download. All of the emulators linked to on this site are produced and maintained by members of this site and other credible individuals and will never be viruses. If you want to get things working, download the FCEUX 2.1.4a win32 Binary, open the emulator, and try to open a rom. A rom might be named Super Mario Bros (U). The (U) means it is a good version of the US copy. Other versions will still run in the emulator for getting started. Remember, we cannot tell you where to get roms. Really all you need to get started is the emulator and roms. Essentially everything else can be done after that.
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Posted: 2/17/2011 10:39 PM
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nesrocks
He/Him
Player (240)
Joined: 5/1/2004
Posts: 4096
Location: Rio, Brazil
Perhaps he "port" as in binaries compatibility for each system?
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Posted: 2/18/2011 6:13 AM
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criticaluser
Former player
Joined: 11/6/2010
Posts: 88
Location: Argentina
Using an emulator is easy (I mean, you don't need to have a lot computer knowledge to use it). For example: you have FCEUX 2.1.4a (nes emulator) unzipped folder, you just enter into that folder and open fceux.exe. Then a window will open, now ¿what do I do?. Supposedly you already have a nes rom (like example.nes for a nes emulator), you have to go to file>open rom, then you look for that rom, then open it. Now that the game is running you have to configure the input (A;B;Start;Select;Up;Down;Right;Left) to play (and TAS) more comfortable; go to config>input...(in some emulators like snes9x you have config>controls>configure controls...) and click on the left configure button, then click on the buttons and assign one key for each one (the ones you like). Now the big deal: TASing (well, the basics) In every TAS you record your input sequence in a movie file (.fm2 in case of fceux). To record a movie, you have to go to File>movie>record movie..., then you give the name you want to the movie file (with .fm2), name of the author, and choose if you want to begin the movie file from start (the game resets), or now (a segment of the game you want to record), click OK and you will be recording every frame until you want to stop recording (File>movie>stop movie). When TASing, you will normally use some features such as savestates(when recording It's called re-record), slowdowns, frame advance. Savestate: in a simple way, when you save a state (normally mapped as shift+F1 for slot 1;shift+F2 for slot 2 for example), the emulator saves everything that was happening on that frame. Now you supposedly make a mistake and you want to redo that, so you load the state, and you go back to that frame so you can dodge an obstacle for example (the emulator erases everything you've done after saving a state if you load a state when you're recording). Slowdown: nothing to explain, you lower the speed of the game, so you can have better reflexes (normally the common hotkeys are + and -). Frame advance: in games there is a minimum time interval (in US/Japanese roms It's 1/60th sec, in PAL roms It's 1/50th sec) called frame. when you use this feature, you can advance frame-by-frame having (in some way) infinite reflexes (common hotkey: /) Normally we use frame advance alongside with savestates to make perfect and precise movies, Hope it helps.
Posted: 2/18/2011 7:30 AM
Post subject: Re: replies to all
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Warp
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Kirkq wrote:
Really all you need to get started is the emulator and roms. Essentially everything else can be done after that.
And a slight problem with that is that ROMs (and where they can be found) cannot be advertised in this forum as a matter of policy, so you'll have to figure that out yourself. (And in principle you would have to also consider the legal issues with it.)