The fact that XTREMAL keeps bumping these old threads.
You prefer Guga, creating ~5 threads a day (half are duplicates of SUCH old ones)?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
- Avoiding lag without a lag counter in Mupen64.
- Avoiding crashes when using Mupen64.
- Avoiding desyncs when using Mupen64.
- Encoding a run done on Mupen64.
- Mupen64.
The fact that XTREMAL keeps bumping these old threads.
I think it was OK for him to bump this thread, because he actually added something the OP wanted people to add to the thread. His pointless bumping of other threads is annoying though.
Nahoc wrote:
- Avoiding lag without a lag counter in Mupen64.
- Avoiding crashes when using Mupen64.
- Avoiding desyncs when using Mupen64.
- Encoding a run done on Mupen64.
- Mupen64.
Encoding is the only one I've experienced, and it really is a pain. For me, at least, I have to keep the Mupen window active whenever I'm encoding something, so I can't do anything else on my computer while Mupen is encoding. No other emulator has that problem.
- Trying to control 2+ players in a game where luck is dependent on the input of all players.
- Taking hours to avoid lag, only to find out the rest of the run desyncs/have worse luck
- Taking hours to save 1 frame only to lose it due to a frame rule
- A small improvement that initially seems useful ends up changing the rng, causing everything from that point to be redone.
For most MSX games I've TASed, it's the input delay, 30 frames per second and lag.
For any game, it's coordinating multiple actions at once while also finding the perfect frame to do each and every single one on, especially if one action is dependent on another. (For example, after you use your weapon, you can't use it again for n frames). This is especially bad with boss fights, I hate TASing boss fights in General.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
I plaid only Sonic games and only just for fun, and the most hard for me is to control character when she (or he) is offscreen… And also I agree with jlun2 about luck, but I never used luck manipulation so deeply.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
Since I do many N64 TASes, desyncs are common and they are the most annoying thing. For games that desync very much, I've had to deal with the problem by aiming for less perfection. That way I don't get too annoyed, and I can keep TASing and progressing faster. It's still annoying though that the TAS has to be played back from the very beginning after about one minute of progress. Playing the movie back from a save state doesn't work in the most desyncy games because it causes a desync in the playback.
The next most annoying thing is variable framerate, which is common in N64 games. It makes TASing take much longer because it's impossible to know when the game reacts to input and how long you have to hold a button, so you have to do continuous testing of future input.
Both of these annoyances are problems with the emulators though, maybe not with TASing itself.
For me, the most irritating part of TASing is not being able to figure out one or more aspects of why the game acts the way it does.
For instance, not being able to find a specific value in RAM. Perhaps the value is a 2-byte integer or a 4-bit nibble, and doing a simple search doesn't help very much.
Or worse... not being able to find a specific rule in RAM. Such as: why does an enemy turn right sometimes and left other times, even though his data structure doesn't change? Do I have to step through the AI assembly? Where the hell is that? GAAH!
For me, the most irritating part of TASing is not being able to figure out one or more aspects of why the game acts the way it does.
For instance, not being able to find a specific value in RAM. Perhaps the value is a 2-byte integer or a 4-bit nibble, and doing a simple search doesn't help very much.
Or worse... not being able to find a specific rule in RAM. Such as: why does an enemy turn right sometimes and left other times, even though his data structure doesn't change? Do I have to step through the AI assembly? Where the hell is that? GAAH!
That's the problem of reverse-engineering complex systems. Actually it can be fun on its own! To me it's more interesting than simply squeezing frames by brute force (replaying one segment several times). So while it may be hardest part of TASing, it's definitely not the most irritating.
TASing multiple routes, i TASed a whole character just to obsolete it with a simpler one in MK Deception that looks much worse, maybe i should have submit Liu Kang instead...
TAS i'm interested:
megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched
fighting games with speed goals in general
