Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
One of the error messages suggests that you need a VM with a Direct3D capable "dummy device", and appropriate drivers.
Not sure exactly what you need as I've never needed to set up a VM yet.
I changed from VirtualBox to VMWare and it solved the problem instantly, so yeah getting the game to run was a problem with the Virtualization software.
I was told that Hourglass won't work with all PC games even if you're running it on a Win XP 32 bits machine, but "it's possible as long as you modify it".
Is there any tutorial teaching how to modify Hourglass in order to make it work with the more problematic games? Or does it take really advanced programming knowledge?
This list of compatible games isn't up to date but gives a few details about optimal settings to make some game work.
Other than that (for example games with a mouse needed), programming skills are required to improve Hourglass.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
There's a project going on in attempts to improve Hourglass, but developers are a resource we have very little of.. Those who know C/C++ and possibly the Windows API, please get in touch with me if you want to contribute.
Some bugs fixed, like one of the reasons to why thread wrap-mode can fail.
Currently mouse support is being added, and coordinate handling is being redone so that it's portable. This shall HOPEFULLY allow TASing of games that need a mouse.
But we NEED help, even if all you can contribute is to read code, figure it out, and comment about it so that it becomes easier to understand, a lot of it is poorly commentated and we have trouble figuring out what it really is meant to do.
There's a project going on in attempts to improve Hourglass, but developers are a resource we have very little of.. Those who know C/C++ and possibly the Windows API, please get in touch with me if you want to contribute.
Some bugs fixed, like one of the reasons to why thread wrap-mode can fail.
Currently mouse support is being added, and coordinate handling is being redone so that it's portable. This shall HOPEFULLY allow TASing of games that need a mouse.
But we NEED help, even if all you can contribute is to read code, figure it out, and comment about it so that it becomes easier to understand, a lot of it is poorly commentated and we have trouble figuring out what it really is meant to do.
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2174
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Zarmakuizz wrote:
Thanks. Don't expect anything from me, if I help it would be mostly reading and commenting code, but I didn't got as much free time than I expected.
I also have a lot less spare time than I'd like. PM me if you want me to set you up, and then you can go through code and comment it whenever you have the time.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
Baka94 wrote:
Seems interesting. Have to test it out some time and see if I could TAS something.
I tried TASing some of the games from hamumu.com in 2012, and all of them work fine within Hourglass. I abandoned my project simply because I had no idea how to manipulate luck to get destructive weapons as fast as possible.
Link to video
I also tried running the older DOS games from that author (from where I got my second nickname sylabulus), and they seem to run fine in JPC-rr (tested on the game called Boboli).
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 :)
I abandoned my project simply because I had no idea how to manipulate luck to get destructive weapons as fast as possible.
As far as I know manipulating luck works so that you save a state before the "luck event" (like item drops) happens, see if you get lucky, if not then load state and try again, if yes then go on. When you load the state and kill the enemy (or something similar) again the game calculates the luck again and you can repeat this untill you get the desired result from the random chance calculator thing.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
The first thing needed to manipulate luck is to know what factors affect the random event. In my case I had no knowledge about it (it’s not Sonic the Hedgehog). So I had to try it in the “dumb” way — by simply trying again and again in slightly different ways, but I still couldn’t get the weapons as fast as I wanted to.
I wrote that post not to say that I need help. I don’t feel like I want to continue that project. I just posted it to inform the others about some games which run perfectly and can be TASed, in hope that someone can TAS it.
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 :)
I was myself thinking that I could try TASing Touhou Hisouten and possibly even Octodad (making the TAS entertaining shouldn't be too difficult). I'll also do some testing with Don't Starve, Minecraft and Terraria. But the problem with those is that they generate random world which might not be ideal for doing a TAS (Exept for Minecraft if you define the seed). I have to see if I'll find other suitable games (like some old games currently not installed on my PC).
Octodad is currently not possible due to missing mouse input.
I think you can rebind all the mouse functions to a keyboard too. Also, I think that I few hours ago read that the mouse is now supported (the info on the actual download page is outdated, or so I heared.)
Here's another bug for the old Hourglass I remembered: Trying to bring up the menu in Bound Plus causes the game to freeze for a while then resume without bringing the menu. Also the title screen intro for said game goes by far too fast in Hourglass compared to the actual speed in game.
