Post subject: The wonderful world of Worms Armageddon!
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Hello! Some of you may have seen me lurking on the edges of the community, promoting the wonderful art of Worms Armageddon TASing here and there (mostly in #nesvideos). Unfortunately, before now, I haven't had anything to show except this mission records page with unassisted and tool-assisted Worms Armageddon replay files, which most (all?) of the people I talked to weren't able to play back due to lacking a PC copy of Worms Armageddon. Therefore, I have, for demonstration, encoded one of my favourite tool-assisted replays to an x264-compressed avi video file! This video (linked at the bottom of the thread) demonstrates the rope race game type on a fairly-difficult map being beaten as fast as possible with the following tools (available only in the tool-assist version of Worms Armageddon; currently not public, unfortunately, though I'm trying to change that):
    Single-step - Single-step is another name for frame advance.
    Replay redubbing - This feature writes a new replay file with the input, map, etc. from the previous file, and plays it back until the player opts to take control of it.
    Frame marking - When redubbing a replay, the game normally starts playing it back from the beginning at a normal, throttled speed (or in single step, if that is enabled). Frame marking allows a player to set a frame the game will "fast-forward" to after redubbing; similar to the use of state-saving.
    Info display - Memory-watching. This is the display seen at the top of the screenshot linked above, which contains useful memory values about the worm the player is currently in control of, or any active (moving) worm. It includes three velocity values (horizontal, vertical, absolute), position with sub-pixel accuracy, current aiming angle and planned shot power, arrowkey input used in the previous frame, worm state (Roping, Rolling, Flying, Walking, etc.) and its state cycle, plus there's a random logic seed in the bottom-left corner of the screen. I think there are some other values, but I'm not quite sure what they are, and haven't needed them.
There is also an extremely advanced aimbot for projectile weapons. I'll describe that in detail later. I didn't add it to this list because it wasn't demonstrated in this video. If you have problems playing it back, make sure you have the x264 codec installed. It comes with various codec packs, my personal favourite being the Combined Community Codec Pack. Some more details about the TAS: This map is famous in the Worms Armageddon community for its amazing original TAS by Deadcode, the developer of the tools. I beat his TAS of the map by 1.24 seconds with this run, which is a pretty amazing accomplishment, considering the immense optimization his run had. Without further ado, here is the video: Lex - TAS of Pi's Mission Impossible 2 rope race - 21.86 sec - no-death ending.x264.avi Edit: Updated mission records page link.
Joined: 10/1/2006
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I played this game and world party a lot around 6 years ago, and I must say that vid is quite impressive. Are these tasing tools in the form of a mod or a patch to the game?
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
The tools are (currently) in the form of a custom build of WA (known as the tool-assist version) which writes encrypted replays, making them only playable with the tool-assist version. Currently, each time I want to make a tool-assisted replay public, I have to send it to one of the two developers (Deadcode or CyberShadow) and ask them to decrypt the replay for me, so they can verify my intentions with the replay. This is to prevent me (or anyone else with the private tool-assist version) from cheating. Deadcode plans to, before making the tool-assist version public, make the regular beta version of WA write encrypted replays instead of the tool-assist version. It is quite logical, that way, especially because it then allows tool-assisted players to edit their replays in any way they want and disallows unassisted players from doing so. The only protections against unassisted players editing their replays or speed-cheating currently are: memory checksums written to the replay after every weapon shot, and a byte written to the replay every x amount of real time (not sure of the value, but then again, I'm not looking to cheat). Would-be-double-post edit: I was told the video linked in the first post might be too fast and difficult to understand what's going on for people unfamiliar with the Worms series. I totally understand. Rope racing is a very extreme end of the diverse Worms Armageddon gaming experience. Therefore, I've decided to encode a TAS much closer to Worms' roots. This time, it's Worms Armageddon mission 2, Operation Market Garden, beaten in 2 turns and 0.00 seconds of turn time. You may be wondering why these strange timing rules are being used. This is a minor history lesson. When players started attempting speedruns of WA missions, there was no such thing as a tool-assist version of WA. The speedruns were measured based on the time during which players had control of their worm and a length of time: the turn time. Since that was true, that would make it possible to constantly use 0 turn time by firing shots at the beginning of each turn until the mission is complete, which is pretty unimpressive. So, the number of turns used (the lower, the better) was determined to be more important than turn time. This presented some very interesting challenges and players came up with amazingly-brilliant solutions in many cases. Deadcode, the only WA developer at the time and oblivious to tool-assisted speedruns (as far as I know; I'll ask him later), started developing tools to help discover possibilities for mission speedruns and various famous rope race speedruns. He created tool-assisted mission speedruns solely to compare to the unassisted speedruns. As his tools got more and more advanced, his tool-assisted speedruns kept getting faster and faster, each comparing directly to the last. This is why the tool-assisted speedruns are still using that timing system. I have been beating many of Deadcode's tool-assisted speedruns with my extensive usage of AI manipulation (making the computer's worms kill themselves) and other forms of luck manipulation recently. Most recently, I've been starting to keep in mind what the absolute fastest (in total game time) mission completions are, in case we ever switch to absolute game timing for tool-assisted mission speedruns. I am very content with the turns-first/turn-time-second timing currently in use, though, because it promotes extra-creative, and often more entertaining/hilarious, solutions. By the way, the .WAgame file for this video is linked on the WKB mission records page, playable by those who own a copy of Worms Armageddon and have applied the 3.6.28.0 beta update to it. Here's the video, encoded with the same codec as the previous one: Lex - TAS of WA mission 02 - Operation Market Garden - 2 turns - 0.00 sec turn time.x264.avi Edit: Updated mission records page link.
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How exactly did you make the enemy worms shoot that precisely into themselves (other than them being incredibly dumb level 2/3 AI entities)?
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Oh, I forgot to add a little bit of information about the TAS itself. In this TAS, I make heavy use of the aimbot, which is an algorithm which scans all possible [in this case, grenade] shots and finds an end result which is closest to my mouse pointer. With this enabled, I can simply move my mouse around on the screen and find exactly the shot I'm looking for. It takes about half a minute to scan all possible shots, but it caches them so it doesn't have to scan each time I move the mouse pointer. In the tool-assist version, it looks like the hypothetical grenade explosion is "glued" to my mouse pointer, in areas where shots are possible. Also, I manipulate the AI into hitting its own worms. Previously, Deadcode and I both used a method which piled three of the worms together and left one seperate, then we killed the pile of three worms and killed the remaining worm. This ended up having only a possibility of winning the mission in 3 turns. So, I figured out a way to AI-manipulate twice to do the maximum amount of grave damage (damage from an exploding dead worm) to the AI's teammates. To answer your question, moozooh, I figured out that doing a jump at any different frame would change, randomly, the random seed. Also, the random seed changes on each frame regardless of anything else, so by extending the time between the end of my turn and the AI's turn, the AI does something differently. I didn't have to extend that time because I simply performed a jump at a particular frame during my retreat time which ended before anything else happened. The process I used was just trial and error. In this case, after I fired my grenade off and my retreat time started, I performed a vertical jump in the next frame. If that didn't make the AI hit itself, I went back and tried it in the next frame, and so on. The "lower-intelligence" AI simply has a range of random deviation from its target shot (my worm). I figured it was possible for it to deviate that extremely from my worm, so I kept trying it. This technique isn't nearly as effective with "CPU5" worms, but they do have a slight deviation range, so it still works at least a little.
Joined: 11/26/2005
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That was quite awesome. I encourage you to make more movies.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Thanks a lot! That's really good to hear! I was really hoping the TASVideos community would enjoy these. :)
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Joined: 10/9/2004
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That is a lot more like what I would have expected. And as always, worms has some fun elements.
Joined: 4/16/2004
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I watched all the mission TASes (and all of the non-assisted ones, too) and I have to say that this is the most awesome thing I've seen in a while. Some of the tactics used are simply hilarious, especially the ones with huge impossible rope (or bungee!) swings across the map to get the crate. Just incredible. Are there more runs somewhere? Like the one of the RR map you posted. I'd really like to see more.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I'm quite glad you enjoyed them! Anyone else with a copy of Worms Armageddon can have as much fun watching these as Kyrsimys did. While playing back replay files with WA version 3.6.28.0, there are several replay controls to use:
    mouse movement - Moving the mouse moves the viewport, regardless of whether Scroll Lock is enabled or not. Holding either Shift or the middle mouse button makes the viewport move at 4 times normal speed. Holding both Shift and the middle mouse button makes the viewport move at 16 times normal speed.
    Scroll Lock - If Scroll Lock is enabled, the viewport will not follow game actions such as worm movement and weapon shots. Pressing the Scroll Lock key enables Scroll Lock as normal.
    1 to 9 - These are the speed keys. 1 is normal speed. The higher the number, the faster the replay plays back. Holding Shift while pressing one of these keys puts the playback in slow motion. Holding 0 while pressing one of these keys speeds up the playback extremely. Holding Shift and 0 while pressing one of these keys slows down the playback extremely.
    s - This is the single step key. The first time s is pressed, it puts the playback in single step mode. Each subsequent press of s steps forward one frame. To leave single step mode, press any of the speed keys.
    r - This key restarts the game from the beginning or restarts the game and fast-forwards to whatever frame you have marked.
    m - This key marks the current frame. The time index of the marked frame will be shown in red in the bottom-left corner of the screen after m is pressed.
    Pause/Break - This is the screenshot key. Each time Pause/Break is pressed, The game saves the viewport as a PNG to the <Worms Armageddon directory>\User\Capture\ directory as screen####.png, where #### is a four-digit decimal number one greater than the number used for the previous screenshot.
I've updated WKB's mission records page with my latest mission TAS for The Drop Zone! Using a new method involving heavy AI manipulation, I was able to reduce the turn time from 19.36 seconds to 3.14 seconds! I've encoded the new run to an AVI file so everyone can watch. :) Kyrsimys, you haven't seen this one yet. Watching the replay is a lot nicer (due to replay controls) than watching the AVI, so I suggest you go to the mission records page and check it out! As always, you can see the past records in the replay archive, linked at the top-right corner of the records table on the mission records page. The AVI file is here: Lex - TAS of WA mission 23 - The Drop Zone - 2 turns - 3.14 sec turn time.x264.avi Edit: Updated mission records page link.
Joined: 4/25/2004
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The rope-vid was awesome :D Unfortunately the other vids are (at this point at least) unaccessible. I have two questions though. Is Team17 actually endorsing turning Wormageddon into a TAS-machine? The updates page state Deadcode was recruited by Team17 and such. I wouldn't exactly be surprised by this move from Team17, but still... How does the manipulation of the AI work? Is the software edited so AI only attacks itself? Or is it another level of manipulation? It hardly seems like luckmanipulation...
qfox.nl
Joined: 8/7/2006
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The WA AI will always attack other AI teams if it cannot get a clear shot at the Player. (It won't attack it's own team, only others.)
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Wow.... Don't need to say more
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Chamale
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Would a TAS of this game be accepted? I would definitely want to see a run published, but the fact that it's a PC game limits who can make a TAS.
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It limits who can watch, actually (Kyrsimys being one of the few.) You need to have the game itself, and it's not something you can just download freely onto your computer and be right as rain. It has replays that others can watch on their own computers (something TASes need to do) and .avi's can be encoded, so it should be submittable like Star Control was. My only concern is that can it be made into a full run (one replay), rather than just the individual stages? Also, I loved the videos, and I'd love for more to be encoded. "well said m'lord! hoo hah!"
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comicalflop wrote:
It limits who can watch, actually (Kyrsimys being one of the few.) You need to have the game itself, and it's not something you can just download freely onto your computer and be right as rain.
Bzzzt! We don't download ROMs here, just as we don't download games. Stop implying that we do.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 4/25/2004
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Ah right, I did notice it was a friendly team. What about the Team17 part, is it their effort? And speedruns of games that not everybody can play shouldn't be a problem imo.
qfox.nl
Joined: 8/27/2006
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Nice videos ;) I'll be looking for some others from you ;)
Yrr
Joined: 8/10/2006
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Is there an avi of the movie available? The links in Lex' post were all broken.
Joined: 12/27/2007
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I noticed this as well. A new/working link would be greatly appreciated. :)
Joined: 9/22/2007
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Chamale wrote:
Would a TAS of this game be accepted? I would definitely want to see a run published, but the fact that it's a PC game limits who can make a TAS.
There is a N64 version.
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Unfortunately, with some of the plugins I've looked at, it seems the worms wiggle in weird ways when moving. Like, I'll move him left and he'll look just like Link from ALttP. Also, the bungee rope physics are less abusive. Besides that, it could work, but you'd need to create a good goal mindset for a "speedrun" of WA... in-game time based, real time based, 'turn based', etc. Which mode will it play? Also, I'd imagine the amount of luck manipulation to be incredibly difficult. Also, I don't see as many useful tools that Lex has shown that are available in mupen. Seeing the exact trajectories of projectiles and knowing what is going to happen before you do so, plus so many other tool capabilities the modified WA has that I'm forgetting to mention, is incredibly helpful. It'd take one really skilled person to find the exact same tool capabilities with only L-Spiro's MHS. Also, I love using the word also.
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Hi guys! I've come back here just to easily watch the videos I posted here, but the links are broken. I'm going to investigate the whereabouts of these videos and fix the links if possible.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
I have found the videos. Now I just need some web space on which to host them. If you can offer about 20 MB of space, or would just like me to send you the videos directly, send an email to lexlexlex@gmail.com or add that address to your google talk or msn (same address for either) and I'll be happy to transfer the files. I love when people see my WA stuff! I spent a long time on it and I'm really proud of it. As of now, I don't have Daemon Tools working, so I can't mount my CD image to start up WA to encode more tool-assisted replays to avi. I may continue working on it if there's any response after this post. I've been playing World of Warcraft recently and haven't been keeping up with Worms Armageddon or the TAS scene, but I don't need to spend as much time on WoW now, so I can probably start working on some of my old gaming hobbies. :)
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Comicalflop wrote:
Unfortunately, with some of the plugins I've looked at, it seems the worms wiggle in weird ways when moving. Like, I'll move him left and he'll look just like Link from ALttP. Also, the bungee rope physics are less abusive. Besides that, it could work, but you'd need to create a good goal mindset for a "speedrun" of WA... in-game time based, real time based, 'turn based', etc. Which mode will it play? Also, I'd imagine the amount of luck manipulation to be incredibly difficult. Also, I don't see as many useful tools that Lex has shown that are available in mupen. Seeing the exact trajectories of projectiles and knowing what is going to happen before you do so, plus so many other tool capabilities the modified WA has that I'm forgetting to mention, is incredibly helpful. It'd take one really skilled person to find the exact same tool capabilities with only L-Spiro's MHS. Also, I love using the word also.
Yeah, like Comicalflop said, there are tons of factors preventing N64 speedrun viability. Firstly, the physics in the N64 version are awful. Secondly, the lack of trajectory mapping would make it 100× more painful than it is with Deadcode's Worms Armageddon tools. I can't imagine doing anything nearly as good as what I've done without trajectory mapping. Roping just couldn't work.