Post subject: Practice TASes
Joined: 5/13/2013
Posts: 180
I put this thread up to discuss a psychological issue I'm having: Being autistic, I fear the wrath of anybody who has power over any kind of "lounge" that people use online like forums, such as this one, and while attempting to abide by the rule of "only completed TASes, and it must be faster than someone else's", I'm actually VERY afraid to publish any of my movies to the site for several reasons: 1. I always start them but never finish them due to life getting in the way. 2. When I DO have time to work on one and make progress in it, I play it back and see that it's not as "crazy" fast as anyone else's on TASvideos, nor does it look "professional", IE I'll TAS SMB1 and have Mario speed through the level as usual, but I look at someone else's and they have Mario using a vine to zip to the other side of the screen curb-stomping Piranha Plants and Goombas the whole way. 3. I have poor choices for TASes. Riichi Mahjong? Please. A ROM hack of Super Metroid? Done to death. Something way out there on the Famicom Disk System? I haven't even played it, how the hell am I supposed to TAS it all the way through? 4. RAM ADDRESSES. RAM SEARCH. I CANNOT FOR THE EVER LOVING LIFE OF ME FIGURE THIS SH** OUT. SOMEONE HELP ME! Seriously, I'm high functioning Autistic, my grade school listed me as GIFTED. Hell, I did research and found out I'm akin to the Age of Aquarius; that means technically I'm a freakin' celestial being [kind of.] . I have the intelligence of two dolphins combined, and dolphins are telepathic. And when I drink Death Wish coffee? That intelligence gets boosted so frickin' high that I can see hexadecimal values in furniture, and I know what they mean. So why the frick can't I figure out RAM addresses?! For chrissake all I want to know is whether that slime is gonna drop an herb or a mithril sword! So, I just do TASes of games as practice. I don't upload them anywhere (yet), I just kinda sit back and see how artistic I am with it.
A wise man once said "Damn, that's one hell of a steak."
MESHUGGAH
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Since the title and the post is more about planning and improving the act of TASing, I'm going to minimize discuss about autism. 0. I had the very same issue. - Saw many professional runs, everyone is crazy fast, and my movies are... "slow". But this is not a problem. Games are different, as well as TASes and TASers. TASes and TASers also subject to change and their value increases over time. - Don't be afraid. My never ending aim for perfectionism definitely didn't helped with this. But the reaction (messages, votes, discusison) of users of this community gave me confidence and also somewhat makes me feel easier. 1. Find and stick to a workplan. Higly game and TAS dependent. - TASing in smaller but bigger time blocks - TASing in multiple but smaller time blocks - The aim is getting the fine rations and scheduling your efforts between: Time (to have for tasing) : Value time (time spent with productivity) : TASing (actual process). You can try smaller games or straightforward TASes. 2. Same as my comments for 0 but extra comment: "All you need to discover a list of conditions and pull it out as best as you can. This means you need to talk the same language as well as hearing it." 3. As long as you are dedicated or having fun with it, don't try to force yourself to "more famous" games just for the sake of getting more popular. I think TASing has it's own amazing and terrible moments with different durations while creating your work of art. 4. I think everyone has strengths and weakness. Which comes with it's limits as well. - You can be the greatest social human ever: But not enough time to have private time, training. - The best developer of all time: But not enough experience to raise your child (as not a program with two legs). Both examples have very simple solution but it comes with sacrifices and it's more of a journey than "go to shop today". You need to work for it. Extra note: I also have various disabilities that seems totally contradicting compared to what I can achieve: - I type very fast on keyboard, my own personal best is 720~780 char/sec without error (used that old typingfast site). I write with pencils, pens, anything very very slow. I just can't fathom with what factors I need to improve or how to understand my own slowness. I also have OK physical body, I just simply have this limitation. - I usually learn very fast, which comes from both lightning reading (sight reading and finding out the context by the cloud of words and sentences beginning and end) edit: and the ever increasing experience of learning various logics. However there are topics that's very similar to an already learnt technique and just simply can't understand it's basics no matter how many times and how slow I read like coroutines in general (how to yield values in Lua for example).
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Post subject: No worries!
Editor, Reviewer, Skilled player (1360)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1646
Location: Italy
Hello YushiroGowa. The first thing I want to tell you is that there is no reason to be afraid. Here we judge the TASes, not the TASers. Also, I see that you have a very respectful attitude towards the rules, and I apprecciate that, but there is no need to go as far as not wanting to share your TASes anywhere. We highly encourage to share any movie file in the userfiles space, as it has been specifically designed for showing incomplete or unoptimized TASes to other people, in order to gather opinions and ideas for improving. There are no requirements for the movies uploaded in the userfiles space, and no one is gonna get offended for suboptimal TASes. 1. Even unfinished works can be useful for other people. This is yet another reason why I suggest sharing unfinished movies or discussing your game knowledge on the forums. 2. Look, if you keep comparing yourself to the others, you will always find something in which they are better than you, it's perfectly normal. You can't expect to be better than everyone without first working on improving yourself. This requires patience, efforts, and trying many times. Maybe you won't reap the benefits immediately, but if you keep trying you will eventually reach your goals, no doubts. 3. I think that a good game choice is a game that you like to play casually. Are there games that you played a lot? Do you have favourite platform or a favourite genre? If you still have troubles, I could suggest some games to you. 4. As MESHUGGAH said, everyone has strengths and weakness, it's perfectly normal. Why don't you focus on things that come easier for you? This would give you greater results and satisfaction. Everyone has different talents, and sometimes you need to combine your work with someone else for obtaining the best results. But if you still need to learn how to work with the RAM, I could help you. We can talk in IRC, Discord, or forum PMs.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
Post subject: Re: Practice TASes
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YushiroGowa wrote:
4. RAM ADDRESSES. RAM SEARCH. I CANNOT FOR THE EVER LOVING LIFE OF ME FIGURE THIS SH** OUT. SOMEONE HELP ME! Seriously, I'm high functioning Autistic, my grade school listed me as GIFTED. Hell, I did research and found out I'm akin to the Age of Aquarius; that means technically I'm a freakin' celestial being [kind of.] . I have the intelligence of two dolphins combined, and dolphins are telepathic. And when I drink Death Wish coffee? That intelligence gets boosted so frickin' high that I can see hexadecimal values in furniture, and I know what they mean. So why the frick can't I figure out RAM addresses?! For chrissake all I want to know is whether that slime is gonna drop an herb or a mithril sword!
I loved you description! Otherwise, every task can be accomplished if you know how to approach it easier. You can learn anything and you can solve anything, you just need some methodology. If a task is too hard, step back and analyze the task itself. Break it into pieces and analyze them one by one. Ask yourself simple questions why you can't handle it, and look for simple answers. Imagine explaining to someone the reasons why it's hard for you. The easy part is basic memory search. Stand on place, look for values that are the same. Then walk forward, look for values that have increased. Stand there, look for values that haven't changed. Walk back and look for values that have decreased. Look at addresses that you have left and keep walking back and forth. If none of the values even remotely corresponds to your actions, either it's a super cryptic game, or you forgot some steps. But what was hard for me was understanding what memory addresses do in general. And after I learned what, I wrote this chapter: http://tasvideos.org/ReverseEngineering.html#Objects And the last thought I have to share is this: only work on things you actually want or need, useless work is harmful. If you need to do something and can't find the attitude to start it, think which productive sites it has. If there's nothing good in it at all, drop it. And switch to something that's meaningful for you.
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.
Experienced player (753)
Joined: 2/5/2012
Posts: 1804
Location: Brasil
pick a simple game, it's what i do, i would surely love do some RPGs but i don't have the tech knowledge so i stick to the stuff i can work with in a reasonable way... but not everything has to be top notch, i still plan on doing some unsubmittable TASes that will be a reference for people in the future that want to do something more good looking
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto. TAS i'm interested: Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS? i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
Reviewer, Active player (288)
Joined: 12/14/2006
Posts: 717
Platform and action games are best for this because it's very easy to see visually the results of your actions (most of the time).
Memory
She/Her
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In my opinion pick something you feel you can be passionate about enough and stick to. If you find a game that makes you feel dedicated, you will work through the other problems.
[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