Hey,
I'm currently TASing this game:
NES
Galaxian (J) (REV0) [!]
SHA1:A2C837C589E0FADEA7626E0245914F1B0C7948FD
MD5:4D2A95F9258DADE4511715DD7C310D38
It seems like the game loops indefinitely without changes in difficulty (as far as I could tell, tho). Only difference for level two onwards I noticed are:
- You can choose where you start the level since you can still move after you beat the first level.
- You can even pre-shoot so you can hit one of the enemies as they spawn
- Score, lifes, and stage indicator (flags) are conserved.
My question: would a fastest-stage-1 submission be an acceptable category? If not, could somebody propose a more adequate ending criterion?
Thanks
-------------------------
Addendum:
For ease of analysis, the following movie solves the first level:
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638246861273711808
And here is a ram map:
https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638246862016140343
It seems like the game loops indefinitely without changes in difficulty (as far as I could tell, tho). Only difference for level two onwards I noticed are:
- You can choose where you start the level since you can still move after you beat the first level.
- You can even pre-shoot so you can hit one of the enemies as they spawn
- Score, lifes, and stage indicator (flags) are conserved.
My question: would a fastest-stage-1 submission be an acceptable category? If not, could somebody propose a more adequate ending criterion?
If difficulty is not ever raising, and there's no new content farther ahead, only 2 endings look reasonable to me: ending after the first loop (level in this case) and maxing out the score asap.
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.
Some games for GC and Wii feature Action Replay cheats which unlock 60 FPS, I think, by uncapping the framerate. Are they allowed to be used?
Action Replay cheats are not features of games but external modifications of them.
External codes are allowed in Alternative if they unlock gameplay or content in the game that in-game codes can't access. Otherwise they are treated as ROM hacks.
Uncapping framerate in console games sounds like a cosmetic improvement, overclocking also uses to remove lag and make gameplay smoother, but it's a territory we haven't explored yet. With PC games you could tweak the environment they run in to make them perform better, but with consoles it's a hack, of either the game or the environment, and neither supported such modification officially.
It would be definitely good for Wiki: Playground, but whether it's worth publishing may require a new discussion. The main question would be where exactly do we stop with external cosmetic improvements, and how legit the result would feel the the wide audience.
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.
I've been looking into TASing Tony Hawk's Underground 100% and I've run into an issue. The currently published THUG run uses a trick called CATBAG that requires some decent setup to use and it was done using SRAM. The problem arises in that 100% would require more setup and wouldn't be done in SRAM (at least currently) since I use DolphinHawk. How would that be handled in terms of judgement?
My thought process is: due to you not actually unlocking anything/not being in ng+ (it's just creating and reassigning tricks) it would be fine for doing it in the run itself. But it could potentially be longer to setup than the amount of time it would save. I've always TASed with the intent of in game time first (which CATBAG would save more of) and I've never had to really deal with/consider the potential loss of real time.
So if there is an ingame timer you can definitely use that as your justification. Otherwise you could consider it a speed/entertainment tradeoff if you so choose.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
With the DTC11 starting soon, there's been some discussion about the possibility of submitting the entry of the winning team of the DTC10 of Ghoul Patrol for publication on TASvideos, and I was wondering if it's something that would be possible and allowed. The only thing that would make it a tough decision to accept or not would be on the quality of the optimisation of the movie.
To my knowledge, the process of merging all the strats from all the teams was abandoned. I have not heard of it in recent times.
Here's the forum thread for the DTC10: Thread #22636: Dream Team Contest 10 - Results announced!
Banjo-Tooie runner, DTC 8, 9, 10, and 11 winner, but more importantly, "When's GR?"
Current projects:
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge - 100% (50 minutes)
Mario Party 1 - All Boards (est: 4-6 hours)
Mario Party 3 - All Minigames (est: 40-50 minutes, not sure)
"Ooooh, I saved some more subpixels. Look at those sweet subpixels. You can't look at them, because they're subpixels, but they look so good." - The8bitbeast
"It's as if I knew what was going to happen. It's as if I had the plan written in front of me and I was reading it. I mean, I do have it in front of me, but I'm not reading it." -garagedooropener
Yes it's allowed for submission. It can only be considered sub-optimal if it's easy to significantly improve quickly, which is not the case for this game. And there's no complete movie that is faster, so the current record is good to go.
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.
To note, it's not abandoned—at least I haven't written it off my plans yet. But it's a bit of an undertaking considering most of the game needs to be reTASed from scratch, and parts of it also need to be rerouted to account for faster item pickup plans. If anyone wants to lead the effort (after DTC11 has run its course, obviously), I will join it, but I don't have it in me to do things by myself.
But you should go ahead and submit what you have anyway imo.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
I think there's a working credits warp setup for Harry Potter. Before I make a run out of it, there's 2 options:
1. Immediately jump to the credits, game doesn't recognize game end after credits, but is faster
2. Do something a bit longer to set up a jump to the end sequence, which I think game seems to recognize? It is slower however.
What is better in this case?
IMO jumping to credits is fine. They are a part of the ending.
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.
There's new discoveries in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for GBC that can improve the current run. I would also like the run to be able to be console verified on gameboy player. However, it seems running on GBA mode for this game introduces a lot of lag every load. This affects both real time, and the game's in game time. Do I just give up on trying to run on GBA mode, or just run it and see what will happen?
There's new discoveries in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for GBC that can improve the current run. I would also like the run to be able to be console verified on gameboy player. However, it seems running on GBA mode for this game introduces a lot of lag every load. This affects both real time, and the game's in game time. Do I just give up on trying to run on GBA mode, or just run it and see what will happen?
How is that related to judging?
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.
There's new discoveries in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for GBC that can improve the current run. I would also like the run to be able to be console verified on gameboy player. However, it seems running on GBA mode for this game introduces a lot of lag every load. This affects both real time, and the game's in game time. Do I just give up on trying to run on GBA mode, or just run it and see what will happen?
How is that related to judging?
Sorry if I wasn't being clear.
I wish to get Harry Potter 2 console verified, but the run would be slower due to more lag on GBA mode. Does that count against using it for a improvement? Do I just make 2 runs to submit to see what judges think?
I wish to get Harry Potter 2 console verified, but the run would be slower due to more lag on GBA mode. Does that count against using it for a improvement? Do I just make 2 runs to submit to see what judges think?
We don't reject for using a console mode needed for verification.
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.
Joined: 8/22/2022
Posts: 44
Location: Moth Forest of the Netherworld
Hello, I've been looking at a new game to TAS "Dodgem Arena" for the PSX. The game is a bit similar to Rocket League if you know that game, but instead of cars kicking a ball around an arena, here its flying vehicles shooting a puck into a goal that moves around the arena in a circular pattern.
The game consists of 8 arenas, 4 of them are available from the beginning, the other 4 are unlocked by finishing the first 4 obviously. Each arena consists of 4 rounds. The first round has 4 pucks in the arena so basically anyone can score points. The 2nd round has 3 pucks, the 3rd round 2 pucks, and the 4th and final round has only 1, making it sometimes very difficult to finish in 1st place. Each round lasts 2 minutes and the player with the most points in the end wins. You can damage enemies with different items scattered around the arena, lasers, rockets etc. If your vehicle loses health it will also lose speed.
Now my TAS goal would be: 8 arenas times 8 minutes would be over an hour long, which is too long for me, and also because i don't want to repeat the same arena 3 more times to avoid repetitiveness.
I want to make a verification movie where i play the game from the beginning to the end, so i can unlock the last 4 arenas. I want to play through all 8 of the arenas only ONCE, not 4 times. The TAS would then be around 20 minutes long, which is good for me.
So i go like this: Do the verification movie to unlock all the arenas, then tas the game with the help of Sram, play through one arena once and after finishing 1st place, quit out and move onto the next arena.
EDIT: Solved it.
I recently managed to construct a functional TASing environment for Baby Pac-Man (details and instructions linked here), and other electromechanical pinball/video arcade games supported by Visual Pinball and Visual PinMAME by extension, using PCem running under libTAS; however, having managed to do that, now I feel like it raises many questions regarding how to categorize game versions, 'emulation accuracy' regarding the simulated pinball table, and etc. I might just be overthinking all this, but here goes.
Can a TAS of a simulated pinball table be considered an actual TAS of the game itself for cataloging purposes, or is it only a TAS of that particular simulated table? If a TAS of a simulated table is considered a "real" TAS of the actual game, should different versions of the reproduced table be considered different game versions?
What is considered "accurate emulation" for a simulated pinball table? (In this case the Baby Pac-Man table is accurate in physics as far as I can tell, but that might not be the case for all tables).
How do deal with the difficult reproduction/syncing workflow?
To elaborate: files required for pinball simulators and VPinMAME cannot be found in the same places as ordinary ROM and emulator resources. The tables themselves are particularly problematic, as in addition to containing the original manufacturer's copyrighted cabinet artwork and thus being unlinkable, they also contain the original work in physics parameters and scripting by the person who performed the recreation effort. As such, rehosting these tables is not allowed, and the original sites that host them require registration in order to download files. Basically, finding the required files independent of any direct aid (which would be prohibited by site rules) is a hell of an adventure, to say the least.
I also have another more specific question regarding Baby Pac-Man: namely, what is a suitable TASing goal? To the best of my knowledge, Baby Pac-Man does not have a killscreen, or at least, no documented killscreen. This leaves a few options for a goal:
Hardest cycle: In Baby Pac-Man, there are only 3 unique mazes; however, at a certain point some of the inner maze walls become invisible, and then eventually they all become invisible, thus defining the point at which the game has reached its hardest difficulty and exhausted all (maze-related) content. However, this goal is not preferable, as it means that time saved by acquiring energizer pellets in the pinball portion becomes highly tenuous, if it saves any time at all, and if the pinball portion is never entered then that means there's no point in not just emulating this via MAME or PinMAME running standalone.
Score attack: In Baby Pac-Man, the score counter can reach up to 10,000,000 points before rolling over. This offers some interesting TASing potential, allowing for more time spent in the pinball portion for acquiring energizers and advancing the fruit. However, it also risks meeting the goal before all unique content has been exhausted, as the fastest way to reach high-score could potentially entail not reaching the final, all invisible walls maze.
"100%"/All bonuses: There are three types of bonuses in Baby Pac-Man; up to 4 Energizers per stage, the Banana as the top-tier fruit (requiring advancing the fruit 7 times), and a maximum tunnel speed of 8 (also requiring advancing the speed 7 times). As such, it is possible to construct a goal of reaching the hardest stage while maxing tunnel speed, acquiring all energizers, maxing out the fruit type, and finally collecting at least one fruit per stage, thus offering a balanced combination of pinball play and maze play. This is the option I'm currently leaning towards, but it also could potentially be considered arbitrary, hence asking for judge input.
Can a TAS of a simulated pinball table be considered an actual TAS of the game itself for cataloging purposes, or is it only a TAS of that particular simulated table? If a TAS of a simulated table is considered a "real" TAS of the actual game, should different versions of the reproduced table be considered different game versions?
Need more info. Wasn't the whole Baby Pac-Man machine some kind of a fixed thing? A TAS of the whole thing sounds legitimate, and versions rarely co-exist as separate branches, because they are usually not too different.
Technoturnovers wrote:
What is considered "accurate emulation" for a simulated pinball table? (In this case the Baby Pac-Man table is accurate in physics as far as I can tell, but that might not be the case for all tables).
The simulation itself looks like a legit video game to me, but I don't know that scene at all to assess simulation quality.
Technoturnovers wrote:
How do deal with the difficult reproduction/syncing workflow?
To elaborate: files required for pinball simulators and VPinMAME cannot be found in the same places as ordinary ROM and emulator resources. The tables themselves are particularly problematic, as in addition to containing the original manufacturer's copyrighted cabinet artwork and thus being unlinkable, they also contain the original work in physics parameters and scripting by the person who performed the recreation effort. As such, rehosting these tables is not allowed, and the original sites that host them require registration in order to download files. Basically, finding the required files independent of any direct aid (which would be prohibited by site rules) is a hell of an adventure, to say the least.
Judges and publishers buy games on steam and similar sites if they have to, so registration is not a problem.
While the setup looks crazy, it would make sense to have a movie that installs everything but the game, and then the game could be different for each actual TAS. That way one would be able to install the emulator (simulator) once and keep that disk image, using it for every new TAS, just like we're meant to keep the image with xp just installed.
Technoturnovers wrote:
Hardest cycle: In Baby Pac-Man, there are only 3 unique mazes; however, at a certain point some of the inner maze walls become invisible, and then eventually they all become invisible, thus defining the point at which the game has reached its hardest difficulty and exhausted all (maze-related) content. However, this goal is not preferable, as it means that time saved by acquiring energizer pellets in the pinball portion becomes highly tenuous, if it saves any time at all, and if the pinball portion is never entered then that means there's no point in not just emulating this via MAME or PinMAME running standalone.
Sounds ok to me, especially if it can make the whole thing simpler.
Technoturnovers wrote:
Score attack: In Baby Pac-Man, the score counter can reach up to 10,000,000 points before rolling over. This offers some interesting TASing potential, allowing for more time spent in the pinball portion for acquiring energizers and advancing the fruit. However, it also risks meeting the goal before all unique content has been exhausted, as the fastest way to reach high-score could potentially entail not reaching the final, all invisible walls maze.
"100%"/All bonuses: There are three types of bonuses in Baby Pac-Man; up to 4 Energizers per stage, the Banana as the top-tier fruit (requiring advancing the fruit 7 times), and a maximum tunnel speed of 8 (also requiring advancing the speed 7 times). As such, it is possible to construct a goal of reaching the hardest stage while maxing tunnel speed, acquiring all energizers, maxing out the fruit type, and finally collecting at least one fruit per stage, thus offering a balanced combination of pinball play and maze play. This is the option I'm currently leaning towards, but it also could potentially be considered arbitrary, hence asking for judge input.
Only things you can collect 100% of would be needed for such a goal. "At least one fruit per stage" sounds like there are more, but they are not important?
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.
Can a TAS of a simulated pinball table be considered an actual TAS of the game itself for cataloging purposes, or is it only a TAS of that particular simulated table? If a TAS of a simulated table is considered a "real" TAS of the actual game, should different versions of the reproduced table be considered different game versions?
Need more info. Wasn't the whole Baby Pac-Man machine some kind of a fixed thing? A TAS of the whole thing sounds legitimate, and versions rarely co-exist as separate branches, because they are usually not too different.
The reason why the version of the recreation is significant is because a recreation of a physical pinball table is ultimately subjective, because there's no way to create a 100% accurate simulation, so the person doing the recreation has to decide on the physics parameters based on what feels right. Basically, it all comes down to the fact that the tables just aren't interchangeable, you can't swap in a different version of the table into the TAS and expect it to work at all.
feos wrote:
While the setup looks crazy, it would make sense to have a movie that installs everything but the game, and then the game could be different for each actual TAS. That way one would be able to install the emulator (simulator) once and keep that disk image, using it for every new TAS, just like we're meant to keep the image with xp just installed.
I'm not gonna do that, because it just isn't really practical. Every pinball table has different prerequisites and a different optimal configuration, and the ROM VPinMAME will use has to be on the disk, it can't be run off of the CD drive. It's even entirely possible that future Visual Pinball submissions might use VP9 if that's compatible, which would require completely different files to work.
feos wrote:
Technoturnovers wrote:
"100%"/All bonuses: There are three types of bonuses in Baby Pac-Man; up to 4 Energizers per stage, the Banana as the top-tier fruit (requiring advancing the fruit 7 times), and a maximum tunnel speed of 8 (also requiring advancing the speed 7 times). As such, it is possible to construct a goal of reaching the hardest stage while maxing tunnel speed, acquiring all energizers, maxing out the fruit type, and finally collecting at least one fruit per stage, thus offering a balanced combination of pinball play and maze play. This is the option I'm currently leaning towards, but it also could potentially be considered arbitrary, hence asking for judge input.
Only things you can collect 100% of would be needed for such a goal. "At least one fruit per stage" sounds like there are more, but they are not important?
I revised my goal not too long ago- I said "at least one" fruit because I didn't know how many actually spawn in this game, but now I know that 2 fruits spawn in each maze like normal Pac-Man, so collect 2 fruits it is.
Also, I revised the verification movie, so the second site isn't necessary now thanks to the new and improved table I'm using; I'll revise my thread once I get this all fully settled, I might still need to make some tweaks for performance reasons.
I have a question regarding verification movies that are used to verify TASes that start from dirty SRAM.
Can the verification movie consist of two bk2 files, which would be played one after the other?
Banjo-Tooie runner, DTC 8, 9, 10, and 11 winner, but more importantly, "When's GR?"
Current projects:
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge - 100% (50 minutes)
Mario Party 1 - All Boards (est: 4-6 hours)
Mario Party 3 - All Minigames (est: 40-50 minutes, not sure)
"Ooooh, I saved some more subpixels. Look at those sweet subpixels. You can't look at them, because they're subpixels, but they look so good." - The8bitbeast
"It's as if I knew what was going to happen. It's as if I had the plan written in front of me and I was reading it. I mean, I do have it in front of me, but I'm not reading it." -garagedooropener
I have a question regarding verification movies that are used to verify TASes that start from dirty SRAM.
Can the verification movie consist of two bk2 files, which would be played one after the other?
We've never limited this so I think there's no problem in having multiple movies, but since you can resume recording from a playback mode, why start a new movie?
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.
I assume this could be a case where the first and second verification movies have different sync settings, such as different controller setups, and require being done in order to make a final SRAM for whatever needs it as the starting point.
The setup of my movie would start by the 7 hours that the verification of the MP3 Story Mode, and my computer really isn't that good, so starting a 2nd movie from the SRAM of the end of the 1st movie would shorten that process.
If it poses problems, I guess I could always just combine the inputs once I'm done making the 2nd half of the verification movie. In theory, that shouldn't desync the 2nd half.
Banjo-Tooie runner, DTC 8, 9, 10, and 11 winner, but more importantly, "When's GR?"
Current projects:
Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge - 100% (50 minutes)
Mario Party 1 - All Boards (est: 4-6 hours)
Mario Party 3 - All Minigames (est: 40-50 minutes, not sure)
"Ooooh, I saved some more subpixels. Look at those sweet subpixels. You can't look at them, because they're subpixels, but they look so good." - The8bitbeast
"It's as if I knew what was going to happen. It's as if I had the plan written in front of me and I was reading it. I mean, I do have it in front of me, but I'm not reading it." -garagedooropener
2 movies are still fine, especially if it's justified in some way and not just absolutely random (tho absolutely random would maybe still be fine lol).
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.
Joined: 11/23/2023
Posts: 3
Location: Toronto Ontario Canada
Rough first draft. Currently 5 seconds slower then Deathscythe. Non Human level of input precision. Like 1 frame tight inputs and precise super usage placement. I'm looking for a Judge's green light. To finish this project's optimization. Wing's beam super has 2 alternating hit boxes that splits in the middle. Sometimes a 1 frame difference can mean less or more damage. More details can be provided if needed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irMSFYhzlBo
Deathscythe run for context - https://tasvideos.org/5697M
A RTA run as an example: https://youtu.be/iUXyp5stbew
