Ok, thank you! Now I understand. Not fully, but more than before. All of you
who understand programs like a hexeditor are really smart according to me.
I think people who understand this are smart as well- like you Ans! Like how can you know that the fourth value (4B3) shows boss status?
And what are those buttons who says "poke me!" and "dump me!" and stuff?
I don't have to care about those buttons, ey?
Thanks a lot! ; ) Maybe I shouldn't feel like this but I think its embarrassing
when I didn't knew this.. :P
Poke means to put a different value into a memory address (useful for figuring out what it does), dumping would have it keep track of the values it goes through.
I suppose he guessed that it's the boss status because it changed every time the boss's pattern changed or something like that.
Like how can you know that the fourth value (4B3) shows boss status?
First I found that "4B9=boss life" using FCEU cheat searcher. Then I put a breakpoint on writing to that address (using FCEU debugger). So I found important subroutine and after analysing the code I retrieved all needed information about boss battle (useful memory addresses, heavy subroutines and ways to avoid their execution during one frame, ways to manipulate boss' AI and so on) I know, this sounds harder than using savestates :) But first step (cheat search) is pretty simple, try it on your SuperC bosses.
Diman wrote:
And what are those buttons who says "poke me!" and "dump me!" and stuff?
I don't have to care about those buttons, ey?
Yes, you don't have to. But if I were you I'd try to experiment with them and think about how useful they can be for some TASing work.
You can use earlier versions of FCEU - there's debugger+memory viewer, it's not so comfortable as in 98.16, but it works.
I agree with ya! It's much easier to see what happens with FCEU 98.16!
First I found that "4B9=boss life" using FCEU cheat searcher.
Aha, so you can find stuff there? Coool! I looked at the button who say
"cheats... " but I didn't know
what code you wrote there or where
you wrote it, cause there's a lot of "fields" where you can wrote stuff into. Like "address" or "value". I can understand
if ya think this is annoying, but you guys are the only
ones who can help me with this...
..cause then I don't have to ask ya "what does this value do?"
Aha, so you can find stuff there? Coool! I looked at the button who say
"cheats... " but I didn't know
what code you wrote there or where
you wrote it, cause there's a lot of "fields" where you can wrote stuff into.
Like "address" or "value".
Well.. It's stop in the production I think, if not AnS is working with the run,
but haven't posted any new WIP's yet... Poor AnS is doing all the work cause
I have hard to understand values in the game... You can ask him cause I
really don't know! =/
By the way: sorry for the late reply! I have some other projects going on
also, which I'm trying to taking care of! That's why I haven't checked out this
topic for a while....
Sorry, guys, I seem to fall down into romhacking and fan translation again. Well, I think I WILL regain my superplay motivation soon... For example I'm somewhat interested in Hi no Tori.
As for Rockin' Kats, uhhh... I began to lose my temper at the middle of Channel 3. It's first level where you need to manipulate luck (kind of) as well as reduce lag (along with performing usual punchgun tricks to move forward on fastest speed).
That doesn't mean I'm leaving the project, just wanted to tell that current progress is rather low, so don't expect final submission too soon.
Joined: 11/9/2007
Posts: 375
Location: Varberg, Sweden
I started to experiment with this game not long after I had completed my Mega Man 3 run. But in the end I thought it was to much work in order to get the level of optimization that I would demand(The rng forces you to do lots of calculations which I can describe more if anyone wonders, plus the lag is soooo tedious). Now well over a year later I can pretty much guarantee I won't start a serious attempt of this so the best I can do is posting my work here to maybe inspire someone else to start this run (I'm talking about the full-game-run, not the channel x-run) and give others a taste of what an improved run of this game might look like:
My first test run which is too sloppy to be submitted despite beating the current published run by 3 minutes -
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1579276848/Rockin%27%20Kats%20%28U%29%20%5B%33%5Dtest.fcm
This run only plays the first 4 levels but is at that point about 1 minute faster than the one above, still only a test run though -
http://dehacked.2y.net/microstorage.php/info/1907383615/Rockin%27%20Kats%20%28U%29%20%5B%33%5Dtest2.fcm
Joined: 11/9/2007
Posts: 375
Location: Varberg, Sweden
Randil wrote:
How does you run compare to AnS' attempt earlier in this thread?
If memory serves me right I do the first room (of level 4) about 1 second faster. And I think the whole level was three seconds faster, but I also lose quite many frames in the process - mainly from lag.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
Allrighty. I've actually tried TASing this game too, but after finding out how much lag this game has, and the fact that lag appears literally all the time, even when there isn't much going on on screen, I now avoid this game like the plague. This game requiries a whole lot of patience if it's to be TASed thoroughly. I still have some RAM addresses and stuff on my computer at home, which I can upload when I get back if there is any interest.
Interest!
As a part of my goal for this year, I have ditched Solomons Key and came to this game. I saw Aglar's attempt and I realized that lag randomly appears in the game....without any reason.
I already PMed Randil about the RAM Addresses so its fine. ;)
Any help would be apreciated.
Joined: 11/9/2007
Posts: 375
Location: Varberg, Sweden
I don't have any tip for how to reduce lag more than just to try many different approches of the same strategy and sometimes wait some frames here and there. I do have some interesting facts about the boss battles though.
Many of the bosses' actions are depending on the value of memory address F6. If the boss has two actions that can occur, it will select one of them if the value is even and the other if it's odd. F6 will move to the next value every frame while on the level selection screen or when an action that is connected to the address occur. These values CAN NOT be manipulated, but what series of values you'll be getting can be controlled by pushing start at different frames at the title screen.
The bosses which this will have the most impact on (from what I've understood) are:
1. The final boss of level 1 (Bull band): When you hit the boss and the value of F6 is odd, the boss will directly come up of another another hole, otherwise three lamps will fall down the screen, which takes around 2 seconds, before the boss will show up again - which is of course not what you want. And thus before you enter the boss room you'll want to have a series of number ahead of you where as many as possible of the 26 upcoming numbers(the boss HP is 26) are odd. I made a lua script to calculate this but I rather give it away via PM because it looks terrible. Tell if you're interested.
2. The ghost dog in level 3: Whenever the boss comes to the center of the screen it will move horsontal if the value of F6 is odd, otherwise it will move towards the character and when it returns to the center, if the address 4B5(will tick up everytime you hit the boss) is >= 7, it will divide itself into smaller parts and wait about 3 seconds before you can hit it.
3. Second last boss in the game: I've haven't actually done any research at all but I suspect that the address controls how the boss jumps.
Good luck to you! - if the text above didn't scare you away:)
Joined: 6/23/2009
Posts: 2227
Location: Georgia, USA
Wow, glad to see that there's this much that's been developed for improvements to this game. If the game is such a pain to TAS because of lag, would it make sense for a few authors to split up the work? Maybe each of you can work out one or two stages?
Used to be a frequent submissions commenter. My new computer has had some issues running emulators, so I've been here more sporadically.
Still haven't gotten around to actually TASing yet... I was going to improve Kid Dracula for GB. It seems I was beaten to it, though, with a recent awesome run by Hetfield90 and StarvinStruthers. (http://tasvideos.org/2928M.html.)
Thanks to goofydylan8 for running Gargoyle's Quest 2 because I mentioned the game! (http://tasvideos.org/2001M.html)
Thanks to feos and MESHUGGAH for taking up runs of Duck Tales 2 because of my old signature!
Thanks also to Samsara for finishing a Treasure Master run. From the submission comments:
Shoutouts and thanks to mklip2001 for arguably being the nicest and most supportive person on the forums.
I know so much about this game that it would be my pleasure to help with anything. I made an .fcm of this game in 16:34, but lost it converting into fm2.
I might show the fm2 to see if anyone can get it to sync.
YoungJ1997lol wrote:
Normally i would say Yes, but thennI thought "its not the same hack" so ill stick with meh.
Sorry for the very late reply. I was busy with end of quarter finals.
If you know a lot about this game, then you sir are the key to optimizing this TAS! I invite you onto the TAS team! :)
Do you have an MSN or can you come onto IRC? Im not really sure how to communicate to you.
