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Editor, Player (44)
Joined: 7/11/2010
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Patashu wrote:
2000:M1 200 teleport fail into a hole trap, and fall down to the
        Vibrating Square level, autopicking up the lit Candelabrum
        (which can't have been in inventory at this point or it would
        have been extinguished when we fell ino the water). Because
        this is the last action of the turn, this hypercharges the
        monsters on the destination level.
What water is being referred to here?
Err, there isn't any, that was from an old version of the plan. We can carry the Candelabrum in this version just fine. Good catch! (The old idea was to have a monster melt ice beneath us and crawl out, which is much more reliable than 200 teleport fail, but unfortunately it doesn't work because air elementals can fly.)
2002:58 Zero-time artiblast depolymorph. (We could just polymorph at
        turn boundary, but the previous turn is so low-probability
        that manipulating a polymorph at 2002:^ would be out of the
        range of plausible luck.)
Does this require appearing on an artifact and autopickuping it, or are there actions that blast you with an artifact from your inventory and take no time?[/quote] The latter. "apply" on any artifact that needs a target, then cancel at the prompt. (In our case, most likely we'd use the Platinum Yendorian Express Card.)
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So it's only 2006 turns now? Quite impressive especially on the same page it was mentioned this:
Even if these strategies can somehow be made to work, we're still only saving three actions before turn 2013. To get a 2014-turn run, we need to save four. Thus, we still need to find extra savings somewhere, or else 2015 is still the theoretical limit. 2014 is not looking as insurmountable an obstacle as it did a few weeks ago, though.
Also http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/DOS/Nethack.html needs updating now.
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I actually seriously think it may be possible to go lower. (2006 was reached in the first place due to a new glitch.) There's a glitch that's not confirmed yet, and would be hard to confirm, but is worthy of investigation. The idea is to arrange for us to be teleported onto a levport trap, without the Amulet, at some point where the code is deeply nested in loops and thus unable to handle the levport immediately; and then, before the levport actually kicks in, to get teleported again onto the Amulet and autopick it up. If I haven't misread the code too badly, this should lead to the levport happening and the Amulet coming along for the ride. I haven't confirmed this yet, though, because such a situation is very awkward to set up.
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Someone asked about the state of this TAS over at Reddit. I may as well repeat the reply I made there over here, even though it doesn't say much that you don't know already:
/u/ais523 on reddit wrote:
So the current state of the TAS is that, after a long period of it being stuck because both dwangoAC and I were busy with other things, we found a major new glitch that completely changes the end of the game (and thus what we have to do to prepare for it). For people who don't know NetHack: because the game accepts sub-frame input (and the limiting factor on realtime is normally either lag or your keyboard bandwidth), realtime doesn't make much sense for a TAS. So we're doing gametime instead. The area containing one particular item that's needed to beat the game unlocks at turn 2000 (this is due to a programming oversight; nobody really noticed until people started speedrunning NetHack really competitively, because normal gameplay will get there well after turn 2000). A gametime speedrun is thus dedicated to preparing as well as you can so that when turn 2000 hits, you can complete the game as quickly as possible from that point. Previously, the theoretical maximum was believed to be 2015 turns (and because the seed we're using corresponds to a date in 2015, we wanted to be finished in 2015, although really the progress isn't going nearly fast enough; dwangoAC is rather optimistic about that). The new glitch has been confirmed to work (we actually persuaded a player who was near the end of a non-speedrun playthrough on a public server to incorporate it into their game in order to verify the glitch; public server play is popular because it lets you prove you aren't cheating). No speedruns have been completed incorporating the new glitch yet, but there's a theoretical plan to complete the game on 2006, just 7 turns after the unlock. You can read it on my website here. Unfortunately, the new glitch cannot be performed efficiently on the seed we have (it looks like we'd have to waste a whole turn), which means that to use optimally we'd have to restart (although things would go a lot quicker the second time because we're re-TASing ground we've already been over). Additionally, many of the things we've done to set up so far don't make sense in the context of the new glitch. Currently, the situation is that another potential new glitch has been found (via code tracing). It hasn't been confirmed yet; the setup is highly specific (and although there are multiple potential setups, some of which might be humanly possible, the fastest candidate for a setup seems to be TAS-only). This new glitch may well go even faster, and as a bonus probably doesn't conflict with our current seed, meaning that we may be able to incorporate it into the run via the use of a lot of hexing, as opposed to having to redo the run.
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If you're so close to finishing the 2015 turn TAS but still yet to investigate all the new discoveries that require completely revamping the plan (which would delay the submission by months at best), why not finish and submit the 2015-turn first, using the 2015-turn era knowledge, while it's still the year 2015. Get it published, then work out further improvements without such a pressing need (and then submit again). It's not like the 2015 turn plan is sloppy or anything... I talked to dwangoAC about it some weeks ago, and he seemed to be in favor of doing this, much as, I presume, a lot of other people waiting for anything to be finished at all (I'm in their camp). I understand the desire to submit a perfect piece of work, but this kind of obstructive perfectionism ends up in lose/lose scenarios more often than not. Submitting a well-planned and executed TAS now is a safeguard against, say, any of you losing motivation or capability to continue, or otherwise losing time/progress, and to be fair there's really no major drawback there aside from, maybe, some stifled pride. Think about it!
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I agree with Moozooh. I'm sure the set up and payoff of the 2006-turn run will be amazing, but the 2015-turn run already does a ton of interesting stuff that many people will love to see. And the existence of the 2015 run won't diminish the accomplishment of the 2006 run any. In any event, best of luck!
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moozooh wrote:
If you're so close to finishing the 2015 turn TAS but still yet to investigate all the new discoveries that require completely revamping the plan (which would delay the submission by months at best), why not finish and submit the 2015-turn first, using the 2015-turn era knowledge, while it's still the year 2015.
Derakon wrote:
I agree with Moozooh. I'm sure the set up and payoff of the 2006-turn run will be amazing, but the 2015-turn run already does a ton of interesting stuff that many people will love to see. And the existence of the 2015 run won't diminish the accomplishment of the 2006 run any.
Because the new, new plan does not require us to create a different dungeon layout we might be able to salvage the vast majority of the run, albeit possibly with some hex editing. In the current run, we do things like learn detect monsters while being attacked by Vlad when we could use that time for something more useful, so it's possible we'll "hex" in different actions during that time and then get the end state to line up so that what was done after that is still usable. If we have room to do everything we need to without going back to hex things in I'm actually in favor of that - we have to spend the turns leading up to turn 2,000 doing *something* and as long as there are enough turns I don't have a big problem with doing "unneeded" things, so long as they are interesting in and of themselves. For Vlad, it's a hilarious setup while we tank massive amounts of damage while twinking and ultimately steal the amulet and leave him standing there impotently so I think we can keep that in even if we could have been more efficient. Having said all that, I have a window of time from now until AGDQ 2016 prep kicks into high gear so I'll do my best to work with ais523 on this while we can. If we can come up with something that is optimal from a turncount perspective and I can convince ais523 that what we have either serves a purpose or does no harm we should be able to finish this singular run without fragmentation, with the option open in the future to obsolete it with a "truly perfect" run. That's my take, anyway. :)
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moozooh wrote:
If you're so close to finishing the 2015 turn TAS but still yet to investigate all the new discoveries that require completely revamping the plan (which would delay the submission by months at best), why not finish and submit the 2015-turn first, using the 2015-turn era knowledge, while it's still the year 2015. Get it published, then work out further improvements without such a pressing need (and then submit again). It's not like the 2015 turn plan is sloppy or anything...
I strongly agree with this. It is completely legitimate to say "Known improvements: During the making of this TAS several new glitches were discovered, which we plan to incorporate in the next version of this TAS". In general I think the publish early, publish often approach where one usually doesn't restart will lead to a better result faster:
  • Which tricks you discover depend on what part of the game you're going through. Let's say that there are 10 tricks to discover, evenly spaced through the game. If you restart every time you find a new trick, then you will end up restarting 10 times, taking 5.5 times as long as a single no-restart TAS. If you first TAS it once, discovering the new tricks along the way, publish, and then go back for a v2, then you get a TAS incorporating the new tricks in only 2 times the time a single TAS takes to make (as well as a pretty good publication already after half that time). These numbers are naive and assume that redoing is the same speed as the first playthrough, and that incorporating the new tricks doesn't lead to other tricks being discovered, both of which are unrealistic, but I think the overall effect they illustrate is real.
  • Publications generate more interest and more scrutiny. Publishing early may therefore help uncover new tricks you would not have thought about otherwise.
  • Publishing early makes it more likely that a good TAS will end up getting published, even if it isn't the perfect TAS (and few TASes are perfect anyway). Restarting too much drains motivation. Feedback after publication might also boost motivation, making a v2 more likely.
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Well, in this case the discovery of the trick had nothing to do with the making of the TAS (except for the fact that it was discovered discussing the TAS); it's in a completely different part of the game. I guess this TAS is unusual because it's had a lot of scrutiny from the NetHack community already, which typically knows more about the game than the TASvideos community. The other reason is that my motivation to complete the 2015-turn version of the TAS has been flagging for a while, because we've got past the parts where we're making general-purpose improvements to our character and moving on to getting very bogged down in the details of the plan; we've been stalled for a while because of being unsure what to do next. I have a suspicion that an attempt to stick to the old plan would continue to go really slowly, especially as there's now less motivation to work out how to bring its desired T:2000 state about.
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ais523 wrote:
unable to handle the levport immediately; and then, before the levport actually kicks in, to get teleported again onto the Amulet and autopick it up. If I haven't misread the code too badly, this should lead to the levport happening and the Amulet coming along for the ride. I haven't confirmed this yet, though, because such a situation is very awkward to set up.
What in the world makes NetHack "not handle a levport immediately"? Is this basically "drop amulet, get hit by quantum mechanic onto levport trap, get hit by quantum mechanic (at same energy but later in execution order) back to amulet, autopickup" in one action? It sounds more complicated than that, almost like one of the break-interrupt-timing-safety glitches in RockMan. Alternately, is quantum Yendor tunneling (above) possible?
TAS.time_between_updates = rnz(100); //days
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More big news. Delayed levport kick-in is now confirmed to a) exist as a glitch, and b) be capable of levporting the Amulet. This means that we can go from the vibrating square level to dlvl 1 in one monster action. The setup is really complex. The easiest setup involves crawling out of water, as shown in this recording (as you might be able to tell from the character name, it was done using "lizard mode", a new debug tool that lets you set up the level like you want and then turn off all debug powers so that everything happens identically to a non-debug game). This setup happens to be humanly possible (if unlikely, I'd call it about a 1 in 10 chance), but it's bad for a speedrun (when tool-assisted) because it can't be done in a form that flies or levitates (in particular, it can't be done as an air elemental). For this glitch to be TAS-worthy, we need to at least tie 2006 turns. I feel it might be beatable, though (2005 would be even better!) I haven't tried routing the post-T:2000 area with this glitch. I suspect it may be faster to find an faster setup (e.g. via the use of 200 teleport fail) than trying to use the one we've confirmed to work. (I feel like I have a good handle on the glitch now; in the test, it's acting exactly like I thought it would. eternaljwh's description of it is pretty accurate; you just need to step a levport trap and subsequently the Amulet on the same monster action (i.e. when the game runs the loop that performs one action for each monster). The problem is that most player-repositioning monster effects avoid traps.) EDIT: Also, I don't think this has been mentioned anywhere on TASvideos yet (it's been mentioned on IRC but that's about it), so here you go: there's an alternative way to quickly fill a level with monsters ("turn undead" on a stack of corpses in inventory) that costs a player action rather than a turn boundary. In the 2006 turn plan, turn boundaries, rather than player actions, were the limiting factor through much of the run, so it's possible that this will lead to an improvement.
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OK, so I've been trying to plan what the endgame looks like now, taking into account all the glitches/strategies we've found while the TAS has been under construction. Assuming we're allowing even very low-probability events, and I haven't made a mistake (or if I have, that it's fixable), we can do it in 2003. Here's the new plan. Two actions of that plan seem very hard to pull off. Possibly the easier (!) is the long sequence of monster actions at the Vibrating Square level revisit, that involves two 200 teleport fails on the same monster action, and also manipulates a spontaneous polyself immediately afterwards on the following turn boundary. The reason I think this one might be easier is that I have a plan that looks like it might work: fill the level with monsters, traps, and in particular quantum mechanics, and just let mechanic after mechanic teleport us in the hope that at least one of them lands us on the right square (then keep teleporting round until the spontaneous polyself lines up). The harder one is crossing Air in one monster action and then landing in the perfect place on Fire. A hypercharged conflicted engulfer will move around at random, repeatedly engulfing and unengulfing us. If its random walk takes us to the portal (already unlikely), then we get dropped straight onto Fire, and have to manipulate the portal to be 4 squares North of us (this is closer than the 5 squares West that was previously the best known portal placement). Pulling off something this unlikely probably involves a computer search for an appropriate seed in advance, then planning the rest of the run around it so that the seed gets hit at the right moment. Another problem with the 2003 turn plan is that for every 4 squares of the random walk, we need to spend 1 turn boundary earlier in the game. This might mean up to 1000 or so turns, each of whose boundaries is just spent hypercharging a monster, which is going to look repetitive (and also kind-of flickery because hypercharging involves changing level) no matter what we do, so I'm not sure it would be that entertaining. I also have a 2004-turn plan that avoids these problems (using a different and equally impressive strategy for Air, that's slightly slower, and using a manual polyself rather than a turn boundary polyself on D:1). At this point I'm not really sure which to aim for. It might depend on how entertaining we can make hypercharging. EDIT: The 2004 turn plan is now online here. dwangoAC and I both have some reservations about the 2003 turn plan, both due to grindiness, and because it seems to be beyond what's reasonably possible to manipulate. So we may have to settle for this one instead.
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The end-of-game plan gets more and more awesome every time I visit the topic!
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I'm tempted to say go out with the 2003 plan, but then with these major discoveries killing the endgame from 2015 turns to 2003/4, chances are someone or group will find an even better route. 0_o
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jlun2 wrote:
I'm tempted to say go out with the 2003 plan, but then with these major discoveries killing the endgame from 2015 turns to 2003/4, chances are someone or group will find an even better route. 0_o
I'm not saying it's impossible, but *this* is the plan from "someone or a group" - there isn't much left that can be done at this point. :) I do not believe it will be possible to get the portal within 4 spaces of the starting portal on Fire and thus I think we'll need to go with the 2,004 plan but we still have some testing to do to confirm that it is really, truly not possible to do so. I'm just glad we don't have to completely throw out the run so far... :)
I was laid off in May 2023 and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as I work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD. I'm dwangoAC, part of the senior staff of TASVideos as the Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
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I'm actually unsure that the 2003 turn plan works, come to think of it. I haven't checked, but I'm unsure that it's possible to get the hypercharged monster through the portal from Earth onto Air without wasting time.
Invariel
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And to think I was stoked about the idea of a 2015-turn run for 2015. Now we have to go back to 2004 to appreciate this work. Sigh, back to work on my time machine.
I am still the wizard that did it. "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata <scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is Samsara last edited by Invariel on 2015-07-26 02:08:14
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Perhaps the chances for the problematic part could be improved by having a second hypercharged monster generate more monsters, gradually filling the level and ensuring that one goes forwards.
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Doesn't this site allow using different game versions? This shouldn't be a problem unless the files for the older version(s) all vanish from the web.
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3.6 is finally out? holy heck
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NetHack 3.6.0 actually contains fixes for many of the bugs discovered and exploited in the making of the TAS; I've been sending bug reports to the devteam. As a result, it wouldn't really make sense to TAS it, given that the TAS has actually influenced its direction.
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I have found what could be another problem: monsters engulfing the player seem to avoid traps. I do not know whether that always happens or not.
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I wanted to ask what the current progress is.
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No progress for a while, sadly. The next step is probably to work out if the current endgame plans are optimized or whether it's possible to save a turn. In particular, it would be nice to know whether a) the current 2003-turn works (I fear it doesn't); and b) whether it's possible to come up with a sane 2003-turn plan (the current one isn't: it's basically impossible to manipulate and the setup for it would be extremely repetitive, tanking the entertainment value of the run).
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