Post subject: Trajectory mapping is awesome.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
You may have seen my PC Worms Armageddon thread which details the tools present in the private tool-assist version of Worms Armageddon. This thread is meant to promote my favorite tool: trajectory mapping. It's described in the other thread like this:
    Trajectory mapping - This feature is extremely useful in all aspects of tool-assisted Worms Armageddon (and probably would be in most other games). It shows the trajectory an object would take in the next ~1000 frames if it took that path, and in roping, goes a step further by showing the possible rope shots after releasing the rope. Imagine having this feature for Umihara Kawase's rope! It really is beautiful.
UraniumAnchor has the idea. He's started a trajectory mapping scripting project for NES Blaster Master. It looks great so far. Not only is there trajectory mapping, but he also has hitbox outlining, the object's state/sprite value (not sure which one), and some other useful information. I'm excited about his run. With tools as advanced as he's making them, it's sure to be very detailed! Here's what my TAS of the Worms Armageddon rope race map, Mission Impossible 2, looks like with trajectory mapping. I definitely wouldn't have been able to design a replay nearly this good without being able to see what would happen x frames ahead. You'll probably want to watch frame-by-frame in your video player to understand what's going on. Hopefully it should be self-explanatory if you do that. Every frame is included (50fps). Here's a clean replay of a speed-promoting map being completed very fast (much faster than the intended unassisted time of 30 seconds): and the same replay with trajectory mapping enabled for comparison: I've seen several screenshots and videos in the TASvideos community with hitbox outlines. That's a great idea! I wish that was included in Worms Armageddon as well. Anyway, the point of this post is not just to show off my Worms Armageddon stuff, but to point out how useful trajectory mapping can be. Trajectory mapping works almost everywhere. Of course, I'll admit I'm being selfish. I want to step into the console TASing scene, but all the games seem so daunting to me without the tools I'm used to. What I'm hoping here is that developers/scripters decide to make some game-specific tools, especially for the more popular games. I know you guys haven't needed it all these years, but I believe trajectory mapping would help bring out the best in the TAS community in general. Most of all, I'd like to see Umihara Kawase with trajectory mapping! Haha.
upthorn
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I agree, trajectory mapping is a pretty cool feature, and one I would like to be able to implement in several games that I have plans for. The difficulty is in the fact that the collision routines for these games are some of the most complicated pieces of code to understand and work with. This becomes especially difficult when there are multiple moving objects that can interact with each other.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Yeah, that's true. Deadcode (Worms Armageddon developer) was able to do trajectory mapping without much trouble at all because he was in possession of the source code. I supposed that's a very rare position for a TAS coder to be in.
Joined: 3/7/2006
Posts: 720
Location: UK
Well, not exactly. After all, the ROM is just code (and graphics etc.), so it might not be the source but you can still 'read' it. :p
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Take it from me that reading and understanding the compiled code in a ROM is far harder than reading and understanding uncompiled source code.
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upthorn
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LagDotCom wrote:
Well, not exactly. After all, the ROM is just code (and graphics etc.), so it might not be the source but you can still 'read' it. :p
This depends heavily upon the emulator having built in debugging tools, which I know NES, Genesis, GBA and DS have, but I'm not sure about SNES, and I'm pretty sure N64, SMS, PSX and most of the other recent entries don't have at all.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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Joined: 2/11/2007
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UraniumAnchor did this for SMB a while back: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=168737#168737 Cause he's a pimp
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Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
NICE! :D UraniumAnchor is great.
Joined: 4/2/2008
Posts: 70
alden wrote:
UraniumAnchor did this for SMB a while back: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=168737#168737 Cause he's a pimp
I lost a week of work on that to an HD crash and haven't touched it since. :( On the other hand: I've been working on this instead
HHS
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Joined: 10/8/2006
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ZSNES for DOS has a debugger, and the N64 emulator Daedalus also has one. Static analysis is also an option. I've made some IDA Pro 5.2 modules for SNES ROMs which can be downloaded at http://gigasoft.byethost15.com.
Joined: 1/17/2008
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First time seeing some of these videos. Damn, it's been a long time, Alex. Glad to see you still in the game.
Lex
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Oh, hi, Dennis. It's a small world after all. For your info, I don't play Worms Armageddon any more, really. I'm still a gamer though.