Nice movies, I like them. Will you try the same for SNES? I tested that...
That was pretty good! And yes I do plan on trying other systems like SNES, but wanted to get the background images as well. The parallax scrolling makes it a bit more difficult as you could tell. Sonic 3 would be really cool to try I think.
adding background is possible by manually integrating it... looks like this
(in this particular game it's impossible to move all the background in the same way as the other video suggested because the background is just 512x256 pixels. the filesize is so big because of lossless compression)
That works perfectly then in my opinion. Does snes9x allow different layers to be turned off like FCEUX? Or Gens as well? If so then that could solve the problem as you just demonstrated.
Yes, turning on and off graphic layers is possible in Snes9x, and it was used for creating the video. I've sent a private message with (much) more details how I created the video. It might give you some inspirations.
With the scripts given there, a very big part for the creation of the videos is automated...
Gimmick!'s sixth level would make an interesting "atlas video", since it is fast-paced and has a nice map.
Really cool music too! I'll add this to my list ;)
Getting faster at this:
Gimmick!
I love it!
AndyDick wrote:
I do plan on trying other systems like SNES, but wanted to get the background images as well. The parallax scrolling makes it a bit more difficult as you could tell. Sonic 3 would be really cool to try I think.
As far as I know, there aren't decent maps of the zones of Sonic 3. Besides that, I think that an atlas using this TAS of Sonic CD would be way more interesting to watch. You could use the great maps made by TerraEsperZ to make an atlas of Palmtree Panic (zone 1, zone 2 and zone 3).
Animating rings and enemies before Sonic reaches them would be awesome. I guess that you could do that with the method mentioned here. However, I think that that would take way too much time and effort to be feasible.
AndyDick wrote:
That works perfectly then in my opinion. Does snes9x allow different layers to be turned off like FCEUX? Or Gens as well? If so then that could solve the problem as you just demonstrated.
Gens has an option to do that. :D
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
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How about a storybook atlas, such as Deja Vu? It could look like the Lolo atlas you recently made, with all the rooms visited in one big grid. I think it could look quite cool, with the cursor jumping between the grid boxes at a high speed.
As far as I know, there aren't decent maps of the zones of Sonic 3. Besides that, I think that an atlas using this TAS of Sonic CD would be way more interesting to watch. You could use the great maps made by TerraEsperZ to make an atlas of Palmtree Panic (zone 1, zone 2 and zone 3).
Animating rings and enemies before Sonic reaches them would be awesome. I guess that you could do that with the method mentioned here. However, I think that that would take way too much time and effort to be feasible.
Very cool looking maps... I think I might give this one a shot next! I've got enough videos under my belt where I feel confident in the general process of putting these together. Now I'm starting to focus more on the presentation aspect of it all like with Prince of Persia or Adventures of Lolo (I like to call it ADHDventures of Lolo):
Link to video
Also, I have managed to sync off-screen movements as well (see the elevators in Donkey Kong for a simple example). Looking briefly at the Sonic CD run... I could see myself at least animating the rings and other simple animations off-screen. Not sure if I'd go as far as doing enemies too. I won't know until I start putting it together I guess, but thanks for pointing this one out to me!
Randil wrote:
How about a storybook atlas, such as Deja Vu? It could look like the Lolo atlas you recently made, with all the rooms visited in one big grid. I think it could look quite cool, with the cursor jumping between the grid boxes at a high speed.
This is a great idea! I used to play this game as a young child too, but I never managed to beat it. Thanks ;)
Looking briefly at the Sonic CD run... I could see myself at least animating the rings and other simple animations off-screen. Not sure if I'd go as far as doing enemies too. I won't know until I start putting it together I guess, but thanks for pointing this one out to me!
Really? :O I look forward to see it. Thank you for your awesome atlases, I love the concept and your work.
AzumaK wrote: I swear my 1 year old daughter's favorite TASVideo is your R4MI run :3
xxNKxx wrote: ok thanks handsome feos :D
Help improving TASVideos!
Thanks for the kind comments :)
And just an FYI... Sonic CD is now in the works! I have successfully exported raw footage and it's syncing up to the atlas map really well. I'm working on Act II btw :D
Thinking about posting this under a new "SegaAtlas" youtube account though to keep the videos organized. Perhaps I should also get "SNESAtlas" as well...
The Sonic CD video will be great for sure! Keep up your good work!
I made an Atlas encode for Happylee's SMB1 (Super Mario Bros) warpless run (yes, for the complete TAS, all levels). For the moment, it's just a DivX encode because x264 failed after 12 hours of encoding time, but I will try again. My 170MB encode can be found at Mediafire and Happylee's original movie can be found here at TASvideos. I think I will post a 1080p encode of it on Youtube once it's ready. I didn't try to sync any offscreen action at all, but I hope you still enjoy it.
AndyDick wrote:
Does snes9x allow different layers to be turned off like FCEUX?
Yes Snes9x also allows to turn off specific graphic layers. It has four background layers and a sprite layer. That was necessary for making the demo videos...
EDIT: I got the x264 encode now. about 1/4 smaller and strongly increased visual quality. SuperMarioBros-Atlas in 720p
The Sonic CD video will be great for sure! Keep up your good work!
I made an Atlas encode for Happylee's SMB1 (Super Mario Bros) warpless run (yes, for the complete TAS, all levels). For the moment, it's just a DivX encode because x264 failed after 12 hours of encoding time, but I will try again. My 170MB encode can be found at Mediafire and Happylee's original movie can be found here at TASvideos. I think I will post a 1080p encode of it on Youtube once it's ready. I didn't try to sync any offscreen action at all, but I hope you still enjoy it.
So it seems you can create these through scripting much faster than I can manually... perhaps its time for me to retire already! Also, I really like how this video was presented with the dual views. I think I will have to borrow that idea ;)
Nice work!
I suppose I have no excuse now! After I finish the Sonic CD video I'm working on I will attempt my next one through this automated method. There are some apparent limits to this creation process though but they largely depend on the game I think:
Can you remove or crop out status bars? See the SMB3 video.
Can screen transitions be removed? See this video for an example leaving them in.
How would a game like Zelda be handled? What position would the basements in dungeons get placed?
These are just a few questions I can think of before jumping into this myself, but again some games just would not have any issues like this so it's a very helpful work around indeed.
Also I'm assuming you can set the output resolution to as big as you'd like in the LUA script? It would help to have the raw video be sized to fit the current level being played at the very least which would allow for any post-processing kind of work like being able to zoom in/out or scroll through the atlas map at your own pace. It would also make it a lot easier to do off-screen animating or keeping environmental changes as well.
Of course these questions assume you have video editing software as well to work with which makes these points moot if you want just a "standard" atlas video.
Either way I guess I'm not going to stop making these things :)
About Zelda... not sure about those item rooms in the dungeons. I think it would be pretty sweet though if you were to do a full run, if you'd map the dungeons in some way like this.
It might also be cool if the white clouds that turn into enemies when you enter a room were there the entire time.
About Zelda... not sure about those item rooms in the dungeons. I think it would be pretty sweet though if you were to do a full run, if you'd map the dungeons in some way like this.
It might also be cool if the white clouds that turn into enemies when you enter a room were there the entire time.
Well that was pretty cool... never seen that before. I have no experience working with memory addresses or finding map positions in roms (or whatever you hackers call it), but is that how it is "stored" in the game?
Either way I guess I'm not going to stop making these things :)
That's definitely the most important part! Your videos are really good, and these scripts wouldn't be that useful for creating videos like your "marble madness" video... And the script I used for that is far from being completely automated...
Can you remove or crop out status bars?
easy, the command is Crop(x,y,width,height). So to cut out the status bar it would be Crop(0,0,256,224-statusbarheight)
Can screen transitions be removed?
Yes, it can even be automated IF you can find some "screen transition" or "total brightness" RAM value.
How would a game like Zelda be handled? What position would the basements in dungeons get placed?
Actually that needs to be adjusted manually when making the first Atlas video for the game. I used the "offset-*" files for that, see below.
Also I'm assuming you can set the output resolution to as big as you'd like in the LUA script?
Yes, that's very possible. Actually, i rewrote all the scripts. The Lua script only saved the current level, "area", and CamX position. (SMB doesn't have any "CamY" values). All the rest was done by the AVIsynth script.
"Standard" Atlas View... I don't think that's possible. For example, I "invented" the underground transitions in 1-1 and 8-4. But the current scripts will create a "standarized" version more or less.
AVIsynth gives you many possibilities to manipulate the videos... In fact, it should be possible to render the "final" video without any tempoary encodes at all, but that would be a bad idea...
Here is the source code. Most important is "Mario.lua" and "avisynth-script.avs". Most of the txt files were created automatically, but the files hasOffset.txt; Offset-*; BottomCam* were created by hand. At the moment, there is no real documentation... Just a few examples: Don't be shocked by the huge amount of files... I splitted them on a by-level-basis. That made it much easier to find the important values. AND: All levels start with mario at CamX-position -1 (not 0), so all maps have a hardcoded offset of one (additional) pixel inside the avisynth-script.avs file. AND: The script didn't create the *33.txt files. AND: I'm sure it would be easier to use "BottomMapOverride-*" files.
About finding Memory addresses... that can be quite difficult, easiest might be to ask the TASer if he can find out the values for you. I think he or she can find the right value pretty quick. For SMB, I only needed to check the "game articles" section, but unfortunately, I couldn't find the "level counter". Therefore, my "level counter" code is quite hackish...
(And encode with x264 failed again after another 10 hours... That's definitely not nice...)
Sounds very versatile! I'll poke around and see if I can get something rendered.
And on that note... here's Palmtree Panic 2:
Link to video
The game moves so fast that I didn't bother animating off-screen.
That makes Sonic look very lazy...
The x264 encode is finished. Smaller and looking much better... SuperMarioBros-Atlas in 720p (has 600000/9995 fps for the audio to sync...). I can't do an encode in 1080p / 60fps because my PC isn't good enough to play back such a file.
EDIT: Now also on Youtube
