Topic by Highness

Posted: 10/17/2005 6:39 PM

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Highness

Player (70)

Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden

Nitsuja! Will you be coding some sort of function like in Snes9x, that fixes all settings automaticly when loading a movie? Or would people have to make a very detailed list of what plugins and settings were used?

Posted: 10/17/2005 6:47 PM

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Bag_of_Magic_Food

He/Him

Active player (277)

Joined: 5/29/2004
Posts: 5712

Not to mention you'd have to find and download each plugin

put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude

Posted: 10/17/2005 6:52 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Highness wrote:

Nitsuja! Will you be coding some sort of function like in Snes9x, that fixes all settings automaticly when loading a movie? Or would people have to make a very detailed list of what plugins and settings were used?

Automatically fixing it would be very hard. Different plugins store their settings in different places and I wouldn't know how to check or change them, even assuming you can have all the required plugins already (and I think plugins are necessarily platform-specific, too). It's much different than Snes9x, because with a plugin system, most of this code is outside of the emulator. For now I was planning on just storing the names of the plugins used to make the movie in the movie file, and warning on playback if the plugins don't match. A detailed list should probably be made, although it could be made for all the games of interest beforehand and referred to, to save people the trouble of discovering it. Some games play fine with almost any settings, though (like Mario 64). I've heard that there are some new graphics plugins that use pixel shaders to achieve very accurate effects compared to all other graphics plugins (such as the slightly noisy way Mario fades out when he uses a warp on the real N64) but I haven't been able to try any of these yet. I imagine that converting N64 movies to AVIs will be harder than usual because of needing to choose plugins and settings that get the best graphics and sound emulation for the particular game. (On the bright side, AFAICT graphics and sound plugins can be changed willy-nilly without causing desync.)

Posted: 10/17/2005 7:08 PM

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Highness

Player (70)

Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden

Oh? So there won't be a problem with desyncs despite what plugins I would use?

Posted: 10/17/2005 8:28 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Exactly. Unless I'm wrong. Actually I'm pretty sure your RSP plugin needs to be the same, but I've only ever heard of 2 different RSP plugins so it shouldn't be that hard to find the right one. Also, in one test I did, changing the input plugin caused a desync. Maybe it's because I had raw data enabled, I'll have to try it again, but the input plugin shouldn't matter for synchronization either because it should be bypassed for playback. BTW, in my tests on Mario 64 so far, I can say that making N64 time attacks will be challenging. There's so many buttons and possible inputs each frame, so getting anywhere near perfect control won't be easy. Plus, re-recording (saving and loading save states) takes longer for N64 games because the states are relatively huge and the plugins can take extra time to adjust to loading a state. But I think the resulting movies could be quite entertaining even if they're harder to make, as many N64 games lend themselves well to speedruns and time attacks.

Posted: 10/18/2005 12:22 AM

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Mlandry

Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 325

Mario games (Mario64, golf, tennis, party, kart) Zelda games Glover ( i cant believe they didnt make a damn speed run of this yet damnit) Chameleon Twist ( or something like that, the things with the long tongues) Banjo games DK64 DukeNukem64 Ogre Battle64 Quest64 Goemon games Im missing a lot because i cant really think of anything besides the known games right now but oh well

Posted: 10/18/2005 6:29 AM

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AdmiralJonB

Joined: 6/20/2004
Posts: 292
Location: United Kingdom

nitsuja wrote:

Also, in one test I did, changing the input plugin caused a desync. Maybe it's because I had raw data enabled, I'll have to try it again, but the input plugin shouldn't matter for synchronization either because it should be bypassed for playback.

Just a thought, I know that the core is the same, but could it be possible that somehow the core calculates differently depending on what plugins are being used?

Posted: 10/18/2005 3:53 PM

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Highness

Player (70)

Joined: 8/24/2004
Posts: 2562
Location: Sweden

Nitsuja - Since more buttons can be pressed for each frame I suggest an added option in the emulator. This should probably go in the emulator thread, but since we already went off topic I felt like writing it here. The option should be something like a layout of buttons above or below the screen in some way. A dialogue saying "Press these buttons for the next frame" And you get to check what buttons you want to press/hold for next frame. When the buttons you want are checked you could click on the button "Advance to next frame" or "Advance x frames with this config". Also you would have to do this for the analogue stick but perhaps with a diffrent kind of interface. I'm not sure how the stick works but for example, have a box that can variate from x -128 - x+128 and another box with y -128 - y+128. So that you can set exact values etc. This is just something. If you want to do it diffrently or add functions, that'll be up to you. Cheers! :)

Posted: 10/18/2005 4:21 PM

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neuron

Joined: 2/16/2005
Posts: 14

i would love to see movies of: Duke Nukem 64 Carmageddon 64 Killer instinct Mortal Kombat Trilogy i'm a big fan of this site and it would be so cool if one of the games makes it into a movie

Posted: 10/19/2005 9:09 PM

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FreshFeeling

Joined: 8/13/2005
Posts: 356
Location: Canada

I'd like to second Blast Corps, Mario 64, and both US Goemon games. I'd like to nominate Hexen, one of the finest Doom-era shooters that has a huge number of speed optimizations, as well as Mischief Makers, which is an astoundly fun and unique side-scroller (that could allow a 100% and any% run).

Posted: 10/20/2005 8:16 PM

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Spacecow

He/Him

Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 247
Location: New Hampshire

I made a quick and crappy test run of the first level of Mischief Makers using solely frame advance if anyone cares enough to see it. It has a few obvious flaws, of course, since this is really only my second or third attempt ever at doing any sort of TAS whatsoever, but it does show how quickly the game can potentially move. http://cupofdirt.net/poop/mmt1b.m64 The "S Rank Guide" FAQ writer on GameFAQs says his best time is nearly a second faster than mine, so there's at least a second of improvement (out of a 9 second level) in there. For example, the places I decide to jump are kind of weird, I'm not too quick at grabbing the guy on the shrine and turning around, and I couldn't make it up to the eagle wing without boosting before throwing the Clancer, which the guide writer says should be possible without boosting. Maybe I just didn't try enough options. Anyway, there you have it...!

Posted: 10/20/2005 10:51 PM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

Wow, and I thought Mischief Makers would take a few levels to get going. I remember the first levels being sort of boring when I played it, then it kept getting more interesting, with some the bosses especially being awesome. (Now back to fixing the emulator, anyways...)

Posted: 10/21/2005 12:24 AM

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StrangenessDSS

Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11

Don't depend on that S-rank guide too heavily. It's old, and there are a lot of tricks that aren't in there. This is my record for the first level, done on a real N64. I know people who have faster times than this, but they don't have videos. (I couldn't watch your demo, by the way. The rerecording Mupen64 crashes when I try to open a rom, but the normal version of Mupen64 works fine.)

Posted: 10/21/2005 12:36 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

StrangenessDSS wrote:

(I couldn't watch your demo, by the way. The rerecording Mupen64 crashes when I try to open a rom, but the normal version of Mupen64 works fine.)

You have to run the re-recording version from the same folder as the normal version. I didn't include all the necessary files with the rerecording version because I was low on file space when I uploaded it, so it relies on files that are in the regular version to work. It's all explained in the included readme which nobody ever reads.

Posted: 10/21/2005 12:37 AM

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StrangenessDSS

Joined: 10/21/2005
Posts: 11

I read the readme and the entire forum thread, and I'm already doing everything mentioned in them.

Posted: 10/21/2005 12:41 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1300)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

OK, then we'll just have to see if the next version does any better, I'll include everything with that and some more stability fixes. Nice movie of the first level, anyway.

Posted: 10/21/2005 1:22 AM
(Edited: 10/21/2005 9:55 PM)

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Spacecow

He/Him

Joined: 6/21/2004
Posts: 247
Location: New Hampshire

Jesus, that's a hell of a jump. After experimenting around a little on console and emulator I've come within one or two block heights of making it up there... I guess now is a good time to admit I don't really know how anything in this game works :P Good thing I wasn't planning on taking things any farther, I just needed an excuse to tool around with this thing :) edit: Just for fun I tried out the second level too. This is it, I swear :) http://cupofdirt.net/poop/1-2.zip

Posted: 10/21/2005 1:31 AM

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Zurreco

Former player

Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA

Spacecow wrote:

...I just needed an excuse to tool around with this thing :)

How about you tool around with Wetrix? No tricks there, really.

hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine

Posted: 10/21/2005 10:39 AM

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Spoony_Bard

Former player

Joined: 8/17/2004
Posts: 377

On a related note, I've been playing through Mischeif Makers normally on Mupen64rerecording, and found that it randomly crashes. There seems to be no pattern to it, as I can restart the emulator and retry the same level and not run into the problem. It may just be my settings, though.

Posted: 10/23/2005 8:36 PM

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Spriteless

Joined: 8/7/2004
Posts: 51

Lode Runner 3d would be cool.

mew.

Posted: 10/25/2005 2:02 PM

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Cazlab

Joined: 7/5/2004
Posts: 551
Location: Karlstad, Sweden

Super Smash Bros. <- !!!!! All Tony Hawk games Yoshi's Story Mario 64 Castlevania Snowboardkids Mario Kart 64 Donkey Kong 64 All Mario Party games South Park Rally Pokémon Stadium

Posted: 10/25/2005 2:05 PM

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