Joined: 6/4/2006
Posts: 97
Location: Everywhere including nowhere
DOS still has frames. A frame is defined as the difference of time between two vsyncs. Even newer "flat panel" monitors that don't have an electron gun still emulate vsyncs to maintain compatibility.
As a matter of interest, if someone does do an FFIX run, they should do the level one run. That'd be fun to watch.
Even more than the Lv01 run, it'd be something else to see them get Excalibur II as well. Sure Lv01 games take extra time (sup, first Black Waltz fight), but it's still exciting because of the challenge aspect.
Edit: Could someone re-upload Omega's links?
For example, many NES games exhibit slowdown in different places, but that does not occur in a TAS because the emulator uses the PC's processor and a PC processor is faster than the NES processor.
For clarification, this is wrong. Emulators still have sprite limits and lag and all that jazz, too. They are actually emulating the limited hardware, and we hope doing it well. Many of the TASes on this site that have gone through a few revisions have gotten to the point where saving frames due to lag has become a concern. The Mega Man video is a great example, as Bisqwit destroys blocks offscreen with the electric weapon in one of the Wily levels to prevent their processor intensive explosion graphics from displaying.
Try it yourself, it's pretty easy to get a game like Kirby or LoZ or Metroid to lag on FCEU, just as it would on a console. Hardman's level in Mega Man III also lags like nothing else when all those little bees and chompers are going at the same time.
In regards to a FFIX run, I think the bare minimum time for a running time is 9 hours, but thats on the actual console. I haven't really had a chance to see what features epsxe has (I can't get it to run my copy of ffix for some reason) and whether or not you could actually cut the time down at a lvl 1 run (Thats alot of potions) but I still think the final fantasy games for anything over the sprite based consoles would be within a reasonable time. Then again, if its a final fantasy movie, I'll watch it, no matter how long it is =P
Personally, I'd like to see just a single segment on The FF series on epsxe doing certain things such as Optional Bosses: Ruby, emerald, ozma, and the secret synth guy near the end of ffix, as well as some of the not so optional but still annoying bosses. Can't really think of any of those...Apart from Ark, but that was because I had Dagger/Garnet in her emo state.
Now...Back to getting epsxe to work...
On ePsxE you can skip movies by selecting change disk and choose an empty iso file, and then quickly change back to the origional (to avoid crashing). (Haven't tried this myself, but one of the FAQs for FFIX on gamefaqs said you can do this).
In any case you would have to "open" the cd tray to skip disks, unless you plan a segmented run where you save at the end of a disk and use that save for the next disk.
As far as using the regan "trick" in FF7, I don't think any TAS would be able to take advantage of that.
And the delays an emulator has can affect a speed run. E.g. if opening the menu in the Zelda games for N64 was faster, a TAS might open them more often.
Finally I think we are going to see TSA's for DS before XBox/XBox360/GameCube/PS2/PS3.
Loading times are incredibly important. It's a source of physical entropy - cryptographic random number generators in most recent OS's will use tiny timing differences in drives as a source of entropy. There's no technical reason why a PSX game couldn't do the same - PSX games could be nondeterministic if they wanted.
Melissa
Loading times are incredibly important. It's a source of physical entropy - cryptographic random number generators in most recent OS's will use tiny timing differences in drives as a source of entropy. There's no technical reason why a PSX game couldn't do the same - PSX games could be nondeterministic if they wanted.
Melissa
You mean a PSX emulators could be nondeterministic if it wanted to be :).
Don't forget than ePSXe aim to enhance the playstation, so the emulator might execute some code to lower loading time and such.
So bad pSX is not open source, because that emulator aim for perfect emulation. They want to make the emulator looks like a pSX pluggued on the computer.
But I think there's not much interrest in rerecording on pSX for the moment.
I dunno if it's just my comp, but ePSXe seems to crash ridiculously often (while also creating savestates that themselves cause the emu to crash shortly after loading them) and cause the sound to develop constant static and/or looping when using savestates, so that's another strike against it, pSX seems to be a lot more reliable with savestates.
I sometimes have sound issues like static when loading savestates, but reloading a second time generally fixes it. I haven't had any crash issues though; maybe the game's too much for your graphics card?
While I'm not too good with programming (I can do PHP/MySQL really easily but I'm not very good with C/C#/C++ yet) couldn't someone add re-recording to PCSX? They're open source and according to the latest post on their website...
Wednesday, September 17, 2003
Pcsx news... - posted by: linuzappz
hi everyone, long time since i posted anything, also i haven't coded for pcsx in some months, i don't have the time anymore, due to pcsx2, work, life and so on... i'll still be around, so if somebody wants to continue our work in pcsx you can drop me a mail (linuzappz@hotmail.com) or contact me on #pcsx2 (#Efnet), you can grab the latest beta sources at the downloads page, but don't ask what's new in there, i don't remember anymore :P.
if you're worrying if i will still continue on pcsx2, yes i will, so relax :).
i also want to thank everyone who helped us in all these years, i would list all you, but as the list would be too long and i'm sure i'll forget some of you i rather not :).
well, this is it so far, hope you all liked my work on pcsx :D
logoff linuzappz
As I said above, I'm not too good with programming yet but couldn't someone who has experience adding these features put them into PCSX?
--------EDIT-----------
Came back 12 hours later to check for a reply and noticed the link to PCSX website didn't go through properly.
BoltR : I'm not bothering with no fairy demons
BoltR : I'm going right for time itself
BoltR : Right in the eye
someone mentioned a while back that you need to have very good savestates, otherwise you'll just desync. though, i don't see why someone doesn't just implement it anyway, and we can just start from the beginning when we want to rerecord, or maybe find a point where savestates are safe. it won't realistically allow many rerecords, but it's better than nothing.
Joined: 5/2/2006
Posts: 1020
Location: Boulder, CO
Funny that FFIX is the one that would be so sought after... Would probably be hours long and on the boring side.
Crash bandicoot on the otherhand would not disappoint.
There are many titles that would make great runs, and probably more games that would not. Still, like always, there are always some people who likes the games and wants to see a run of it. :)
I sent this sort of message to DeHackEd not long ago, but I found out he doesn't accept private messages...so I'll post in public instead.
Sometime last week, I found out that DarkMan's GPU/SPU Recorder can be used to produce TAS-like videos (I use ePSXe). This is probably what Omega was referring to when this topic was started, but I'll explain anyway.
The plugin works well enough that I was able to manage a "mock TAS" (as I call it) of Mega Man X4 by slowing the gameplay down to 20 frames per second and using savestates. The GPU Recorder plugin records to a .rec file that plays back with GPU Player (which is a buggy program). As long as you did things correctly, it should play your video smoothly, with no traces of re-recording (nothing like the video jerking back or something).
Of course, this plugin isn't perfect (the SPU Recorder lags) and likely isn't ready for this site's standards in it's current form, since it doesn't produce input files for emulator playback. I just thought that someone would like to know about this option, and maybe modify it to make it acceptable for use here. Perhaps it would be easier than modifying an emulator itself?
Also, I've seen some sort of plugin for FPSE called JoyDemo in my searches. Apparently, it can record input for emulator playback. Likely worth looking into, if not just for making the job easier.
Anyway, I might have just repeated things people already knew, but I hope this was new/interesting/of use to someone.
Joined: 4/21/2004
Posts: 3517
Location: Stockholm, Sweden
Thank you very much for sharing this great news with us Molotov. I hope some encoder fiddles with it to make it bulletproof.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
Source code would be required. ePSXe does not offer it. So that rules out input based recording in epsxe.
As you said, this feature is not an input recorder. Nearest I can tell it's an output recorder. It wouldn't be accepted for the site as it sounds like it's easily tampered with.
Sorry. Not happening for submissions, but if you want to play around yourself then by all means.
How many people are working on this?
I'm guessing PCSX crashes early on thats why I haven't seen any WIP yet.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/197338/41181
The gamefaqs guide is helpful, but there are many, many things skippable when you have TAS abilites. Plus a perfect 100% item run isn't our goal.
The current SDA run is at 8:32. No FMV skips.
http://speeddemosarchive.com/FinalFantasy9.html
Youtube version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9u3oOscf7l0
With FMV skips.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VzQlBRt1v08
I'm working on researching these exact things along a timeline:
1. Gil to pick up in the field
2. Items to pick up in the field
3. Items to steal
4. Items to buy
5. Abilities to learn
6. Items to synthesize
7. Equipment to wear for each boss
8. Active party selection
Precision is what its about after all...
