TASVideos in general has many runs that are obsolete just by virtue of their age. Some movies however are notably bad for their use of emulators that are not even considered acceptable by today's standards. There are a daunting number of these runs, so this thread is dedicated to dealing with a small part of the problem in Dega, a Sega Master System and Game Gear emulator. The total number of remaining runs using Dega is small, and all but 2 are under 20 minutes, so the goal is at least approachable.
If anyone is interested, feel free to post and I'll add you to the list.
_The8bitbeast/EZGames69_ [1019] SMS Sonic the Hedgehog 2 "best ending" by mike89 in 18:44.28
__Challenger__ [1061] SMS Wonder Boy by AngerFist in 43:05.02
_The8bitbeast_ [2152] SMS Zillion "100%" by caitsith2 in 18:30.38
Just so it is known, even today's emulators do not emulate SMS well enough. For one thing, the startup state is known to be wildly incorrect. And for BIOS / post boot state, which should be chosen?
Still it will be nice to move from old emulators and finally get some console verifications done with SMS runs.
What would it take to quickly determine if Z80 R register is read by a game, as the easiest indicator of a console verifiable run? Static analysis? Analysis during gameplay?
Joined: 4/7/2015
Posts: 331
Location: Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
Interesting, I encourage this approach to old movies.
I wanna study and TAS Sonic 2 (SMS), because I used it to ask my girlfriend in dating ^^
So yea I can make more ram research and a good lua script to beat [1019] SMS Sonic the Hedgehog 2 "best ending" by mike89 in 18:44.28.
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math.
My things:
YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
This is really cool, I didn't realise that this was a big priority. It'll be interesting to see if the pause button can be used in any of these. Honestly about half of this list is on my list of possible future TASes so hopefully I can help to deal with this over time for any that are left over.
The one specific one that I could fully commit to is Sonic 1 GG since I've had experience with the SMS TAS. Also I'd love to see if Jungle boss is skippable and if there are any more underflows on the GG version. It'd be good to update it with the more current goal real time minus bonus screens rather than just game time. So I'm happy to do Sonic 1 GG unless anyone else desperately wants to.
Glad to see more TASers interessed to obsolete that Dega movies!
I'm working on a improvement of Cyborg Hunter.
On Wonderboy, there's a extra level that isn't present on the published TAS. It requires a long time to get the extra level. I decided to work on this game on November or December 2017.
Kenseiden is easy to resync on BizHawk, and I have a RAM Watch of this game (almost complete).
After finished Ninja Gaiden, I tried to work on Sonic 2, but because of lags and that timer, I gave up. But I have a WIP. ;)
EDIT: I didn't aware about that bootup. I'll redo that Cyborg Hunter run to include this.
My homepage
--Currently not much motived for TASing as before...--
But I'm still working.
Just so it is known, even today's emulators do not emulate SMS well enough. For one thing, the startup state is known to be wildly incorrect. And for BIOS / post boot state, which should be chosen?
Still it will be nice to move from old emulators and finally get some console verifications done with SMS runs.
What would it take to quickly determine if Z80 R register is read by a game, as the easiest indicator of a console verifiable run? Static analysis? Analysis during gameplay?
Good point, the goal here isn't going from bad to perfect, its going from bad to better, and at least in an environment where analysis and improvements can be made, and BizHawk's z80 core is at least pretty strong.
The8bitbeast wrote:
This is really cool, I didn't realise that this was a big priority. It'll be interesting to see if the pause button can be used in any of these. Honestly about half of this list is on my list of possible future TASes so hopefully I can help to deal with this over time for any that are left over.
Well, it's a personal priority to me, not an offical site priority or anything. Still it's good to see other people share the same opinion.
Challenger wrote:
EDIT: I didn't aware about that bootup. I'll redo that Cyborg Hunter run to include this.
I forgot this as well, guess I'll have to include it in Kung Fu Kid, I'll be using BIOS 1.3.
Alright first game already taken off the list!
Since it's come up recently I'll mention it here too. GG and SMS runs should be made using BizHawk 2.0.1 or later due to a bug in the z80 in previous versions. It is a rare bug that only effects a few games but it's best to avoid it altogether.
Also I'll take a look at Rocky now that the run on the workbench was rejected and I already have a good idea how it works.
Thanks to Challenger for finishing Cyborg Hunter!
I already have Rygar (Argos no Juujiken) on the workbench since that one had a bad emulation bug.
I still plan to do Rocky, but I might try to tackle King's Quest next.
I updated the OP a bit. King's Quest and Rocky seem like they'll be wrapped up soon.
I'm working on George Foreman right now. Depending on my motivation I might work on another one after that, but I'm not sure which one yet.
Although I don't understand much about sub-pixels, and with the recent improvement that I found, I'll help to improve Kenseiden! One of my favorite games.Probably the last game (dega movies) that's enough for me to improve.
My homepage
--Currently not much motived for TASing as before...--
But I'm still working.
Although I don't understand much about sub-pixels, and with the recent improvement that I found, I'll help to improve Kenseiden! One of my favorite games.Probably the last game (dega movies) that's enough for me to improve.
Cool, are you still working on Wonder Boy at all?
zoboner wrote:
I'll can be interested by Phantasy Star .
Are you going to be working on it zoboner? Or doing research?
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Tails' Sky Patrol was quite well optimized. But, so far I managed to save 3 frames in each of the first 2 levels, so I'm at least making progress. There's a slim chance I'll have it and a revamped version of George Foreman back on the workbench by year end.
I did a little progress but put on hold temporarily to work on some other projects before the end of this year. But I'm still intend to work on Wonderboy.
zoboner wrote:
I'll can be interested by Phantasy Star .
Cool to hear about Phantasy Star.
Alyosha wrote:
Tails' Sky Patrol was quite well optimized. But, so far I managed to save 3 frames in each of the first 2 levels, so I'm at least making progress.
Nice work. I also considered the same optimization reason. But, the lag of this game is randomly?
My homepage
--Currently not much motived for TASing as before...--
But I'm still working.
Are you going to be working on it zoboner? Or doing research?
Work and research, but it risk to be long, so it's not for tomorrow.
I take this job and I'm curious to know how this game run concerning fights.
What a pity that nfq don't given more informations on this run, but not a problem, I restart and I'll get all who'll be necessary to make this TAS !
Work and research, but it risk to be long, so it's not for tomorrow.
I take this job and I'm curious to know how this game run concerning fights.
What a pity that nfq don't given more informations on this run, but not a problem, I restart and I'll get all who'll be necessary to make this TAS !
Awesome! Good Luck with that ambitious undertaking.
Challenger wrote:
But, the lag of this game is randomly?
Yeah I don't know. I was not able to sync kumquat's run at all in BizHawk, despite the overall time it takes to do stuff seeming to be correct. This tells me that lag is way different between the two. Even just changing some minor things in BizHawk does have seeming random impact on lag (although the net result is usually the exact same number of lag frames, just in different locations.) My approach so far is just to take the minimum number of actions possible which makes lag easier to track.
Thanks to some speedy work by judges and publishers, we can now cross off 3 more runs from here!
This is further then I expected to have gotten by this time, maybe 2018 can see this wrapped up!
Joined: 4/7/2015
Posts: 331
Location: Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
Dang... I'm on my last semester, so I couldn't engage yet with a TAS, I had to stop all my projects to get college done. After my graduation in july I'll have all the time in the world to continue my projects, including Sonic 2.
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math.
My things:
YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
