Introduction

This movie obsoletes [3542] A2600 Frogger by Alyosha in 01:34.62. There, Alyosha discovered that delaying the start by 2 frames, you get dealt a better hand on the first stages. But he also mentions that probably an exhaustive bot-based method might find a better solution for the overall game. Here it is.

Software + Hardware

Rom Information

Rom: Frogger (1982) (Parker Bros)
  • SHA1: E859B935A36494F3C4B4BF5547392600FB9C96F0
  • MD5: 081E2C114C9C20B61ACF25FC95C71BF4

Emulator

  • EmuHawk 2.8.0 (Core: Atari2600Hawk)

Routing Bot

  • Bot: JaffarPlus
  • Routing Core: Stella - Disabled TIA
  • Platform: 'The Jaffanator' - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X (64 cores, 128 threads) + 256Gb RAM (Average Exploration Performance: 0.7M States/s)

Comparison Movie


Timing Table

                       Old                     New                    Diff
  Stage      Initial         Total       Initial     Total       Stage     Total
   Boot            0          441             0       441           0       0
    1            441          424           441       424           0       0
Transition       865          436           865       436           0       0
    2           1301          506          1301       404        -102       -102
Transition      1807          436          1705       436           0       0
    3           2243          352          2141       444          92       92
Transition      2595          436          2585       436           0       0
    4           3031          588          3021       382        -206       -206
Transition      3619          436          3403       436           0       0
    5           4055          642          3839       430        -212       -212
Transition      4697          436          4269       436           0       0
    6           5133          536          4705       372        -164       -164
Movie End       5669                       5077                             -592

This is my anticipated April's fools submission. It's a serious movie tho. Where's the joke? I spent around 50 hours adapting the Stella emulator to run with my bot. Atari 2600 emulation is extremely complicated due to the interaction between the different chips, especially the TIA. I am so tired of this, I wanna go back to NES.

nymx: Claiming for judging.

nymx: This was a pleasuRe to judgE. I'm always exciTed to see boted woRk. Cutting almOst 10 Seconds is jusT shockIng. ExCellent work! (Read between the lines eien!)
Work qualifies for "No Major Skips".
Accepting to "Standard".

despoa: Processing...


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15609
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8119: eien86's A2600 Frogger in 01:24.71
Challenger
He/Him
Skilled player (1691)
Joined: 2/23/2016
Posts: 1062
Wow Jaffar even polished the gameplay by waiting much less between stages while bruteforcing the game. Very nice work. Yes vote.
My homepage --Currently not much motived for TASing as before...-- But I'm still working.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3826)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2832
Location: US
Nice, always cool too see more advancements in Jaffar-bot technology. Games like this never felt quite done as there was only so much time and effort to put into searching by hand, really glad to see things like 'The Jaffanator' giving a more satisfying solution. Also I feel your pain regarding A2600 emulation, glad the result still synced in BizHawk after all the work you put into it, (most games should, but with A2600 you never really know for sure.)
PLANET
He/Him
Joined: 1/3/2018
Posts: 74
Thank you man! Appreciate that you've made this TAS a LOT. It's a different version of the game than Atari 65 XL/XE's, but it brings back old very good memories. It was the only game that my mother liked... :' ) As such, Frogger has a special place in my heart. Thank you, once again...!
eien86
He/Him
Judge, Skilled player (1875)
Joined: 3/21/2021
Posts: 262
Location: Switzerland
PLANET wrote:
Thank you man! Appreciate that you've made this TAS a LOT. It's a different version of the game than Atari 65 XL/XE's, but it brings back old very good memories. It was the only game that my mother liked... :' ) As such, Frogger has a special place in my heart. Thank you, once again...!
Hey PLANET, I'm very happy you liked this one and that it brought such nice memories. That alone made the time spent on the Atari emulator worth it ;)
Editor, Player (79)
Joined: 1/2/2022
Posts: 65
Location: Canada
Claiming for encoding. Edit: encode on MEGA (YT preview)
Editor, Publisher, Player (47)
Joined: 10/15/2021
Posts: 377
The subtitles are covering what appears to be a life counter on the bottom left. Key elements of the HUD should not be covered by the subtitles as much as possible. I suggest splitting the subtitles into three subentries and putting them at the bottom-center.
Editor, Player (79)
Joined: 1/2/2022
Posts: 65
Location: Canada
I redid the encodes, links are in my first post.
Editor, Publisher, Player (47)
Joined: 10/15/2021
Posts: 377
Can you also supply screenshots to use as thumbnails for the publications?
Editor, Player (79)
Joined: 1/2/2022
Posts: 65
Location: Canada
I added relevant screenshots to my MEGA folder.
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15609
Location: 127.0.0.1
This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5196] A2600 Frogger by eien86 in 01:24.71