When I try to playback the .dtm on the latest Dolphin (2182) the movie ends immediately.
Oh, I forgot to tell you, you can't play .dtm's from other Dolphin revisions on a different revision. It will either stop like what happened to you, or it will desync right away. If you want to use a more recent revision of Dolphin, I think the TAS needs to be restarted unfortunately, assuming that it will fix the problem with the level you were talking about. It's better than running into more desyncs on the way with an older revision.
I'll do an un-optimized TAS through the game then using all the strats and see if it syncs. Will also give me a good time estimate for an optimized run if it ever gets done.
Desyncing issue still present in the vehicle levels. You can load the same savestate a handful of times and sometimes it will sync, sometimes it won't. I'll send a report for it in again.
Did an un-optimized TAS of the last level, Evil Summit, for testing and came out with a 2:01 (47 seconds faster than I've ever done it on console). Had multiple desyncs on playback though, I guess the first level might be the only one truly immune to playback desyncs? Hoping the game will not have desync issues someday.
I originally thought that you couldn't skip the first portion of the Bloch fight but it does actually work. Major time save:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rexOx1lt_WE&feature=youtu.be
I'll test it out soon. I've been burned by this TAS so many times that it makes it very hard for me to re-approach it. If this fixes all desync issues (which it very well might) I will consider working on it with someone that's willing to do equal or more inputs.
I'd be happy to join back into your team for this [tas]k.
Short on time nowadays but will do my best
I don't have nearly as much free time anymore either. I would probably work on it an hour a day, 5 days a week. It's a very short game though, with all that's developed the final time might be less than 30 minutes real time.
On another note, I was thinking the other day, how much easier TASing fps games would be if there was a tool that let you click on a spot on the gameplay screen and then the in-game recital moves to and locks your aim to that spot, even as you move around. I wonder if someone with coding skill would be able to make a controller plugin like this? Dealing with seperate x and ya axis movements while aiming is very time consuming.
Example: You enter a room in the game, you click one time on an enemy's head to set the aim point, you continue moving forward into the room and the plugin automatically controls the c-stick to move your crosshair to the spot you selected, you shoot your gun when the crosshair reaches his head, then you un-lock the aim point and continue TASing.
So I recently got a PS2 and the OCD Agent Under Fire enthusiast in me tested three different versions of the game on the console. The PS2 version came out 3 months before the Gamecube release so I assumed it would have the same/more advantages for speedrunning but I was pretty surprised with the results.
The PS2 versions I tested:
PDSS-001565A1 2 (black label disc)
PDSS-001565A1 6 (black label disc)
PDSS-001565A1 7 (red label/greatest hits disc)
The main speedrunning differences between Agent Under Fire on PS2 and Gamecube:
1. None of the three PS2 versions I tried had explosion boost physics. It would seem that explosion boosting was added on Gamecube (and maybe Xbox) for whatever reason, then removed again for the player's choice version. Nerf.
2. The PS2 version of the game is harder, at least on 00 Agent. You take more damage more quickly. I'm not sure if it's because enemies are more accurate or that you have less health, but you definitely die sooner in harder sections. Nerf.
3. Your car's e-brake on the PS2 version has a lot more stopping power, it's less of a slide. Nerf?
4. Some stairs don't slow down your running speed in the PS2 version like they do on Gamecube. I noticed this in the Fire & Water level. Buff.
Now that I'm certain the Gamecube version is best for speedrunning I'm going to test Dolphin's stability once again :P.
For instance, a loading screen in 007: Agent Under Fire would drop to 2 FPS on every single loading screen except for the first one (which, doesn't use EFB pokes for some reason.) This would lead to a very, very lengthy wait for people who were looking forward to playing the second stage of the game.
Thankfully, degasus came up with a nifty way to speedup some of the games suffering from EFB poke bottlenecks in OpenGL. Before this, each EFB poke was converted into one GPU operation, creating a bottleneck between CPU and GPU communication. Now EFB pokes can be combined into one more expensive GPU operation, but because of the decrease in overhead it is much, much faster. In the same scene in 007: Agent Under Fire is around 20 FPS, a 1000% increase in performance.
For instance, a loading screen in 007: Agent Under Fire would drop to 2 FPS on every single loading screen except for the first one (which, doesn't use EFB pokes for some reason.) This would lead to a very, very lengthy wait for people who were looking forward to playing the second stage of the game.
Thankfully, degasus came up with a nifty way to speedup some of the games suffering from EFB poke bottlenecks in OpenGL. Before this, each EFB poke was converted into one GPU operation, creating a bottleneck between CPU and GPU communication. Now EFB pokes can be combined into one more expensive GPU operation, but because of the decrease in overhead it is much, much faster. In the same scene in 007: Agent Under Fire is around 20 FPS, a 1000% increase in performance.
I tested the new revision of Dolphin and saw no improvements in loading or sync :(. The loading fix probably only applies to when you're playing the game with speedup and dual core enabled for a higher framerate, not during TASing. The game desync'd at the start of the second level, a pretty typical spot. I also had issues with my inputs going completely unnoticed at the end of levels 2 and 3 which also used to occur at times in the older Dophins.
I just got a new, much beefier, laptop so I will do more testing soon.
Did you change the decoder/encoder to use openGL? im gonna test now too.
edit: just tested on 6576 or something and its basically frozen on 2nd mission.
edit 2: rc 5.0 still frozen on 2nd mission
I think the RCs are pretty far behind on updates actually (though no idea if they are THAT far behind). I'll have to try to see if recent SVNs work on this though (though this isn't a priority for me).
I think the RCs are pretty far behind on updates actually (though no idea if they are THAT far behind). I'll have to try to see if recent SVNs work on this though (though this isn't a priority for me).
At the time of my post, it was almost on par with the recent updates. Now its obviously far behind.
I think the RCs are pretty far behind on updates actually (though no idea if they are THAT far behind). I'll have to try to see if recent SVNs work on this though (though this isn't a priority for me).
At the time of my post, it was almost on par with the recent updates. Now its obviously far behind.
A few months ago, we announced our intentions to work on and release Dolphin 5.0 with a new release method. By using a stable branch, we hoped to avoid doing a feature freeze so that devs could both work on new features and continue to stomp out regressions. Unfortunately... that didn't work. Users wanted the newest features to be in Dolphin 5.0, developers were confused on what features needed to go to what branches, and things more or less ended up not working out the way we hoped.
Sometimes, it's best to just admit a mistake and do things right, so, in order to provide users and developers with the clearest path for Dolphin 5.0, we will be restarting the Dolphin 5.0 release process from scratch. That means abandoning the stable branch (along with merging all unique fixes over into Master) and eventually implementing a full feature freeze in order to give time to close all regressions and make Dolphin 5.0 the special release it needs to be.
We hope that users are understanding of the delay. With that, let us continue with our regularly scheduled Progress Report action!
Which I presume means use that latest SVN instead of v5 for now.
Which I presume means use that latest SVN instead of v5 for now.
Yes, though the correct way to say it is "use the latest development build instead of the 5.0 release candidates". Dolphin changed from SVN to git a while ago, and there is no 5.0 release yet.
