So, to get some discussion flowing - maybe some excitement - how about people share what they are hoping to see in 2011?
I'll start -
Touchme's Secret of Mana (U)
PCSX2 with rerecording
Wind Waker any% (looks like it is already going to be close to the OoT level of glitching)
Mega Man 1, the new version that starts with Bomb Man
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Crikey what a long list.
In general, what I am looking forward to:
New emulators and TASable systems. That's a given.
Obsoletions of various runs.
The mere inch of a possibility that Rayman (not the Advance one) may be TASable soon
And the specifics:
Super Mario World 96exit, any% and glitchfest runs
Yoshi's Island 100%
Mega Man 1 improvement
Mega Man 9/10
Grand Theft Auto 2
Croc 100%
GC Sonic Adventure 2 Battle any% hopefully.
TheAxeMan's NES Crystalis
Kirkq's N64 Bomberman Hero. Yeah I'm looking forward to finishing my own run :P
I don't think Wind Waker any% will get finished any time soon. You can't heal out of a zombie hover by practical means to my knowledge unless the game boy advance tingle tuner is emulated.
EDIT:
Joined: 4/21/2004
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But this seems so far away :( someone needs to lobby at team pscx2.
I love this site and will always do. Greatest site ever! TASVideos till I die jigga!
And oddly only one thing to add: F-Zero GX story mode. Might even take to this myself if nobody else does and I get something that can run Dolphin fairly well.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
CUE/multi-bin support in PSXjin.
Correct CDDA emulation in PSXjin.
A better N64 emulator.
PCSX2 with re-recording
pirohiko's Crash Bandicoot 2 100% TAS
Bhezt Rhy's Crash Bandicoot N-Tranced TAS
Tompa's Zelda Minish Cap TAS
Mr.Gruntz's Majoras Mask TAS (hopefully)
Me learning to code emulators properly so I can contribute with bugfixing and other changes for various systems.
Well not OoT level. You still have to do most of the game and it will take a few hours.
So more like MM level glitching (the skipped mandatory content, not the time it takes). Speaking of which, I really look foreward to the MM TAS being done. :D
lmao! I've yet to finish my DoDonPachi verification movie to start TASing it.
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So here's my stuff.
A stable and fully-working Dolphin rerecording emulator, for both TASing and encoding.
A stable and fully-working PCSX2 rerecording emulator, for both TASing and encoding.
A stable and fully-working nullDC/nullDC NAOMI rerecording emulat... you know the pattern.
^ Same things for TASing/encoding PSP and iPhone/iPad games (I want to TAS Infinity Blade).
New platforms for TASing and encoding.
Any epic TAS that is as good or better than [1686] NES Mega Man by Shinryuu & finalfighter in 12:23.34.
Joined: 4/17/2010
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FODA tasing again.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Many, many Super Smash Bros Melee runs. So therefore I echo Mr. Epic's sentiment Getting a publication is secondary, I just want much coolness from much people. also a better PC for me. XD
Keeping with Gamecube, I'd rather see Twilight Princess than Wind Waker.
Grunz's Majora's Mask run.
And--at the risk of revealing a likely run for myself--Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords.
With luck manipulation - that could be pretty awesome.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
I have wondered for quite long why this hasn't been implemented a long time ago.
There are other systems from the 80's where TASing would be theoretically possible, but have one major dilemma: Mainly, if the games were distributed on cassettes (and even if they were on disquettes). How should a TAS deal with loading the game?
With a ROM cartdridge system the question is trivial: Just reset the system with the ROM cartridge in (all this emulated, of course), and it just starts in a second (and in a deterministic way at that) and that's it. However, what if the system only supports programs in cassettes? You can't just start up the system and make it load the game from a cassette because it would take at least 5 minutes to do so, 10 minutes at worst. (Yes, it really was like that back then with those systems. We had to wait at worst 10 minutes before we could start playing a game. Ah the times...)
Many emulators of such systems support speed-loading: They detect when a game is being loaded (using the system's ROM routines) and switch to turbo mode in which they load the game as fast as the hosting computer allows (in modern PCs that means the game will load in a fraction of a second instead of 10 minutes). However, this is basically "non-standard" in that it's not doing what the original system is doing. (Also there exist a few games which bypass the loading routines in the system's ROM and use their own, in which case it's more difficult for the emulator to automatically do this.)
Another solution commonly used is to use a ROM dump instead of the original game data. This is done by simply loading the game as usual and then at the startscreen saving a snapshot of the entire ROM with the emulator, and using that to load the game instead of the original data. Again, doesn't emulate the original system where this obviously wasn't possible. (It also means the game is not started from reset, and the exact point in time when the ROM dump was done is up to the person who did it rather than it being standardized in any way. Also games that load in multiple parts, iow. are not loaded all at once, cannot use this, obviously.)
However, AFAIK the Atari 2600 used ROM cartridges, so this shouldn't be a problem.
Sorry but I don't see the problem with this. Disc based system also don't emulate load times. They just load instantly. See GC and PSX TASes.
I don't think it's a problem since TASes aren't meant to be compared to console runs. This should be clear from the different timing systems SDA and TASvideos use. So this is the best and faiest way to compare TASes with one another.
Joined: 6/11/2006
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Location: Arboga, Sweden
I'd love to see 2011 as the year of straigh forward kick ass TASes with 0 cutscenes and just awesomeness. So yeah. Looking forward to the past, I suppose. YES I AM GETTING OLD :<
I've been playing around with DDP as well. Are you going for maximum score? All bees? Full chains wherever possible? No deaths? No bombs?
As for other runs, I'm psyched about the Rockman 1 improvement that's supposed to be coming soon. Really, all the Rock/Mega/Whatever Man runs will probably be awesome. I'd like to see the FF7 and FF8 runs finished this year. Also, a SMW run that uses the new powerup incrementation glitch.
It's not that simple with cassette-based systems. With cassettes the data is modulated into an analog carrier signal sound. The routine that reads the data simply samples the input sound at certain intervals and interprets the levels. While some speed adjustement is performed, there are limits, which is why you can't simply speed up the sound to get the data to load faster.
The ROM of the computer (basically it's "operating system") offers a routine for loading data from a cassette tape. If the game just calls it to load the data, what the emulator can do is to load the requested data in a microsecond and then return to the calling code. However, if the game uses its own custom loading routine (as many games did), it becomes more complicated. The emulation speed could be increased at this point by several orders of magnitude, but whether this can be done automatically by the emulator or whether it has to be done manually, I'm not sure. (Also if the game shows something on the loading screen while it loads using its own loading routine, which was a pretty common reason to use such a routine, it would be superfast and thus the speeded up emulation is easily visible.)
It may be different with a console using CDs if games always call the ROM/OS routines to load data from it because then the emulator can simply load the data as fast as the hosting system allows. (Alternatively the emulator can simply pretend that the CD drive has a speed of one millionX, if the loading routines are based eg. on some kind of DMA system.)
Actually, I can guarantee that PSXjin & PCSX-rr emulate load times. In fact, both have a hidden, unused option to enable 'fast-disc loading', which mimics the increased speed option available on the PS2.
Here is the code to handle it.
Language: C++
// 1x = 75 sectors per second
// PSXCLK = 1 sec in the ps
// so (PSXCLK / 75) / BIAS = cdr read time (linuzappz)
#define cdReadTime ((PSXCLK / 75) / BIAS)
BACK ON TOPIC
Yes, finally! The TAS that game deserves!
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.