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Introduction

A few days ago I submitted a movie #8149: eien86 & mscroggs's NES Pac-Man (Namco) "single level" in 00:44.18 that solves a single level of Pac-Man, under the impression it was the fastest route. I was wrong since Randil had already produced a much faster movie with a better route. Here I take that route and transcribe the pellet order into JaffarPlus to solve the level by having a reward function (r) with the following shape:
r = #PelletsInPathEatenInOrder * 1000.0 + distanceToNextPellet
The PelletsInPathEatenInOrder rewards the bot for every pellet eaten in the (reversed) optimal path, and not for any other pellet which is out of order in the optimal route. The distance to the next pellet is the manhattan distance from the center of pacman and the position of the next pellet in the route. The result is a movie that's 20 frames faster. I am in favor of adding Randil as co-author, if they and the judge considers it fair.
Regarding several comments my previous submission received regarding the unacceptability of the movie because it doesn't solve the entire game, I cite the recent jurisprudence on the acceptability of single-level submissions where the game does not have an ending. This case is debatable, since Pac-Man has no ending. I cite Wikipedia that cites someone else:
The game increases in difficulty as the player progresses: the ghosts become faster, and the energizers' effect decreases in duration, eventually disappearing entirely. Due to an integer overflow, the 256th level loads improperly, rendering it impossible to complete.
I argue that single level is as fair as category as overflow%.

Comparison Movie

Software + Hardware

Rom Information

Rom: Pac-Man (Tengen)
  • headerless rom hash: SHA1:A34E68372082513209A795786C8EEA493CC2CD14
  • headerless rom hash: MD5:C4AE6CC4E981A8316429572409018DC8
  • PRG (8KB) + CHR hash: SHA1:96C8879B8F0C70803A5F7754D53F8BD60F016163
  • PRG (8KB) + CHR hash: MD5:E6EE06910B926DB6A19F1F1C3A3EB21D

Emulator

  • EmuHawk 2.8.0 (Core: NesHawk)

Routing Bot

  • Bot: JaffarPlus
  • Routing Core: QuickNES
  • Platform: 'The Jaffanator' - AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3990X (64 cores, 128 threads) + 256Gb RAM (Average Exploration Performance: 1.35M States/s)
Re-record count is 78552719565

TASVideoAgent
They/Them
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8152: eien86's NES Pac-Man (Tengen) "single level" in 00:36.36
Spikestuff
They/Them
Editor, Publisher, Expert player (2312)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6342
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My No Vote retains for the same reason as before.
Spikestuff wrote:
Pac-Man's NES has a loop which has a speed and enemy speed cap (and aggression). It's not hard to figure out where your input can be repeated as you can clone your input. And if my memory serves me correctly it's at key, which is Maze 13. This movie is not complete.
You can make your argument again about something that can be amended, even though it shouldn't in this case, but I'll also leave it with this comment. What's the point of boasting that you are running with a Threadripper if you're not actually going to complete a game which has a known end point and instead do basically bare minimum and only barely improving over what a human does? Edit: You bring up 256 this time, but that's exclusive to the Arcade version. NES is technically endless. But as I stated on the previous submission and quoted forward here, you only need to do up to at minimum Maze 13. Your counterpoint is invalid when you reach a Maze fairly early on which will have the highest aggression from the Ghosts, and lower Power Pellet time. Edit 2: Something I forgot to bring up here and on the previous submission. Regardless of version whether it be Namco or Tengen. There's 3 interludes telling a story. Where the third gets repeated:
  • Pac-Man is chased by Blinky both go off screen, Blinky is being chased by a larger Pac-Man.
  • Pac-Man is chased by Blinky, Blinky runs over a line and breaks their outfit.
  • Pac-Man is chased by Blinky (who patched up their outfit), both go off screen, Blinky is seen going back the other way with a wardrobe malfunction.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
eien86
He/Him
Judge, Skilled player (1724)
Joined: 3/21/2021
Posts: 174
Location: Switzerland
Cancelling this submission based on the feedback received, in favor of my upcoming submission where: - The category has more chances to meet acceptance criteria - I includes the exact inputs of this submission but adds more levels, up to where the game doesn't change anymore
TASVideosGrue
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