Hello! I am YushiroGowa, and I'm a gamer of 17 years. I've been playing video games since 1996, the year I was born, and when I discovered the ability to record games being played at superhuman speed, I thought, "why not try that for myself?" So I learned a few tricks, and I even have a few runs of my own (though they're mainly practice, not really "%100 runs or playing through the entire game), but any tips or help would be appreciated.
Mad props to adelikat for having such an awesome community!
A wise man once said "Damn, that's one hell of a steak."
Here's a tip: A good way to decide whether or not a game is easy/fun/worth TASing is to play through it first, either in real time or with frame advance. Try to at least beat the game first or look up a play through to get a rough idea on how long it may be. Then, if you think it's worth the time to make a run, start finding useful things/tricks that may help you in the game. Searching for RAM addresses is helpful too, especially the addresses that tell where your character is.
In particular, you should search for information, tricks, timesavers, routes, do test run semi-optimized TASes etc, until you feel comfortable enough to do the TAS itself, otherwise you'll have to figure out so much stuff all at once that you'll progress slowly and be demotivated.
Yep, basically "playaround" with the game, with and without TASing tools, while looking for any useful info (then try to replicate some tricks that you've found for example)... Also try anything you can think about, even mindless button mashing if you feel like it, you never know how a game could handle some situations.
A test run is never a waste of time, too, I'd say.
And when you have your game that you want to TAS, make WIPs, ask for feedback on it, ask questions to people who know alot about the game. Anything can help make it easier and better.
And don't forget to have fun ^^
Yep, basically "playaround" with the game, with and without TASing tools, while looking for any useful info (then try to replicate some tricks that you've found for example)... Also try anything you can think about, even mindless button mashing if you feel like it, you never know how a game could handle some situations.
A test run is never a waste of time, too, I'd say.
And when you have your game that you want to TAS, make WIPs, ask for feedback on it, ask questions to people who know alot about the game. Anything can help make it easier and better.
And don't forget to have fun ^^
Thanks for the help, bro! Playarounds are my most favorite, especially that Marvel VS Capcom playaround I saw (I couldn't stop laughing when the two Captain America's were just crotch-shotting each other in the air).
Quick question, since Source games like Half Life 2 support recording in slow motion and playing back at superhuman speed using demos, would that be eligible to submit to the "Windows" or "Computer" category?
A wise man once said "Damn, that's one hell of a steak."
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
That would be an interesting question. Would a demo file that the engine created, be allowed as a submission on TASVideos? The engine runs the demo and the input is reproduced getting the same results everytime, but is it a "valid" demo? No cheats used, stuff like that.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
There's been some talk about that sort of thing before (in fact, the site has some code to handle one particular example: .lmp movies for the Doom engine). It needs to be decided on a case by case basis, which would include some thorough inspection of how the engine's movie format works, etc.
I personally would be strongly opposed to any engine that was not open source. Not on ideological grounds, but practical ones; tasability, verification, and encoding are hard enough already on the open source emulators! Going back to the days of famtasia would be a nightmare.
Those aren't "categories", but systems. If one submits DooM demo, it gets system of "DOOM".
Also, many of those demo file formats store game state and not just keypresses, making tampering easy and verification very hard.
Also, I think there was a project to make rerecording version of Quake I (IIRC, by Riot2/OneEightHundred), but I don't know what came of it.
That would be an interesting question. Would a demo file that the engine created, be allowed as a submission on TASVideos? The engine runs the demo and the input is reproduced getting the same results everytime, but is it a "valid" demo? No cheats used, stuff like that.
Lol. Well what I meant was, record a demo in slowmo, but then play it back after recording, in real time, but use something like Fraps to record a video of the demo.
A wise man once said "Damn, that's one hell of a steak."
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
YushiroGowa wrote:
hegyak wrote:
That would be an interesting question. Would a demo file that the engine created, be allowed as a submission on TASVideos? The engine runs the demo and the input is reproduced getting the same results everytime, but is it a "valid" demo? No cheats used, stuff like that.
Lol. Well what I meant was, record a demo in slowmo, but then play it back after recording, in real time, but use something like Fraps to record a video of the demo.
What would be done is people would want the demo file(s) to verify what you did. We don't allow pre-encoded videos as submissions. WIPs, sure.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
The engine runs the demo and the input is reproduced getting the same results everytime
No, it doesn't. HL2 demos, at the very least, contain game states (or parts of them, at least) rather than input, making it possible to create demos (through outside programs) that finish levels far quicker than actually possible.
That would be an interesting question. Would a demo file that the engine created, be allowed as a submission on TASVideos? The engine runs the demo and the input is reproduced getting the same results everytime, but is it a "valid" demo? No cheats used, stuff like that.
Lol. Well what I meant was, record a demo in slowmo, but then play it back after recording, in real time, but use something like Fraps to record a video of the demo.
What would be done is people would want the demo file(s) to verify what you did. We don't allow pre-encoded videos as submissions. WIPs, sure.
Ah, okay. Didn't think about that.
Here's the link to my TAS Test run of HL2. Be warned: your brain cells may be completely obliterated by the time the video is over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SCMGrhiHmU&feature=youtu.be
And I just realized that I didn't edit the video properly >_< Damn my half-functional brain...
A wise man once said "Damn, that's one hell of a steak."
Joined: 3/8/2012
Posts: 398
Location: Windfall Island
I haven't actually done a run of HL2, but I've seen a couple and I've done portal runs. For a good example of what a demo should look like, I would watch "Portal Done Pro-er". Btw, you might not want to shake the camera so much. There is a new engine and an old engine for HL2, I believe the new one is better for ABH and AFH. You should watch some speedruns to get a good idea of how crazy it can be, I. Not sure if you were getting them optimal, even if it was messing around. Cool testrun though.
IronSlayer wrote:
Your counterargument would be like me saying that the Earth is round and then you telling me that I need to show it's flat so I can "prove us all wrong".
