Table of contents
History of becomimg a member of TASVideos
I was born in 1985, and I got my own NES (actually it was pirated Dendy) at the age of 7. Back then in Russia we had only simple games to buy, such as Lode Runner or Mario Bros, because the industry of pirating Dendy only started. But a few years later we already got such games with mappers as TMNT series, Battletoads series, Zen Intergalactic Ninja, Bucky O'Hare, other complicated games like Rockin' Kats. And of course, I did play Battle City, Mario & Contra with friends (and loved neither of those).
After some years SEGA Mega Drive (Genesis) took its positions & became almost as popular as Dendy was. Then an era of 3D & Sony PlayStation set in. When 3D was something new & exciting, I interested in it. But only NES (& some Genesis) games could bring me nostalgia!
I got my own internets in 2009, & lurked for some gameplay vids on YouTube.
Don't exactly remember which was the very first TAS I've seen, but it was one of these:
- NES Tom & Jerry
- NES Darkwing Duck
- Genesis X-Men 2
- NES Battletoads
I came, I laughed, I wtf'd 9000 times, & went to X-Men's Submission page to get some info on such an exotic type of gaming. Obviously I thought those were all real-time speedruns at first!
I barely understood the info about using some tools, and still couldn't imagine what tools. I was a noob even in emulation too, so my amazement was unlimited when I discovered TAS as a phenomenon.
My first post on the Forum was like that.
Work for TASVideos
Init
The first thing I did was creating a vast article in Wikipedia. I've shown it to AnS & moozooh, and they liked it a lot, fixed old stuff & added new.
Publishing
As I always adored High Definition TAS encodes on YouTube, I got a dream to study it. I contacted Flygon & Mister Epic to work it out, then tried to learn Standard Definition encoding, but never finished a single SD encode. Though, I made some HDs, sgrunt approved them, and I started posting them in threads.
When I accumulated some quantity of HD encodes, I wanted to embed them to actual publications, that's why I was made a Vested Editor like WebNations, who also mirrored TASes with his YouTube Director's Account with no timelimit.
By the way, I am the third HD encoder of TASVideos, and the beginner of the "reencoding old runs in HD" tradition. New encoders continued this work, while I've done almost all I wished in reencoding. I then started encoding for submissions I was interested in.
Since I became a Publisher (2012-07-04), I felt I needed some simple to use setup for all-in-one encoding. So I released the TAS Encoding Package that is used in Hybrid Encode Guide. It includes AVS and BAT files developed by the community:
I seem to have become a Senior Publisher 2013-08-13.
Friday the 13th, 2013, I was a senior publisher, and published [2458] GBA Metroid: Zero Mission "100%" by Dragonfangs in 1:00:46.28, and emptied the queue.
feos versus youtube
Judging
I was made a Judge 26.01.2013. I loved that work, because it involves deep understanding of TAS optimality for particular runs, investigating the sense of submissions and expanding the gaming outlook. And I like to make well-grounded decisions.
My judging era ended 2015-02-21.
But in 2016-11-11, exactly 5 years after my and MESHUGGAH's Battletoads submission, I returned as a Judge, attempting to grow up upon my previous attitude that gained me demotion. The basic idea now is to get super hungry for factors to account for while judging, to address them all verbally, and to put them into unbreakable logical chains in the judgment notes. This resulted in me getting into this list.
Senior Judge since 2018-05-14.
Policies
I happened to have influenced changes in site rules and policies.
- Newcomer flag
- Unobsoletions
- "X glitch" versus "no X glitch" versus blank label
- Educational games
- Arbitrary extra images
- Framerates for PC games
- TASVideos should become TASer focused
Coding
I do some code hacks here and there to some rerecording emulators:
PCSX
- Features for the resync workflow
- Fix for Abe games sprite transparency bug
- Some fixes for GTA2 audio and Rayman
Gens
- Practicing coding on my own version of a hex editor
- Custom backdrop color
- Hotkeys to toggle layers
- Right click menu
FCEUX
-
readwordandwritewordlua funbctions - Dendy mode
- Overclocking
- Prescale filter
- PAL filter (WIP)
DeSmuMe
- Ability to dump at high resolution
BizHawk
July 8 I finally started committing to BizHawk. All my commits except that first one are tastudio (or Lua) related. I didn't expect myself to say that, but I like how IDE operates in C#, and objects weren't as painful as Internet uses to picture them. My main job was to hunt tastudio crashes down, and now when we nuked them all, I add features and fix some silly (yet not simple!) bugs.
MAME-RR
Started with adding the read-only switch, then I took over entirely and even made a couple public releases (alpha and beta though), which resulted in mame-rr movies being accepted to tasvideos and published.
MAME
Not directly related to tasing, but my plan is to make adopting the mame core to bizhawk as easy as possible, so it needs some features a tas client would depend on. Originally mame could only put savestates to the disk, I added RAM based savestates. For easier testing of them I also added Rewind feature that uses such savestates. The plan is to wire RAM states in lua and then start porting the core over, probably using libretro layer.
JPC-RR
Hacked the emulator to put framerate into JMD dump, with the help from Ilari made it stop dumping impossible frames. This resulted in series of CFR segments in the dump instead of VFR frames. Hacked JPC-RR streamtools as well, to support this updated JMD format and generate segmented lossless video of it, also instead of VFR video it was providing. http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=20128
avifps
A tool that reads AVI files you drop onto it, reports their framerates, and calculates framerate that they will have in common if you multiply their framerates by some integers. Basically calculates the least common multiple of their framerates taken as fractions (numerator / denominator).
Resync workflow
It's the project of mine and BadPotato's, aimed for adding automation for resyncing TASes made on PCSX to play and be encoded with Eternal SPU plugin.
Reverse engineering
Not a pro at that, but did some extensive efforts for Ninja Gaiden 1, Genesis Adventures of Batman and Robin and Genesis Earthworm Jim 2, to display everything that a TASer would need out of what appears possible to debug.
Runs
- Genesis Gargoyles.
-
Ninja Gaiden "pacifist"Entirely up to MESHUGGAH. -
NES Robocop Vs. The TerminatorGrabbed by Inzult. - Battletoads & Double Dragon "playaround" and pure "speedrun".
-
Battletoads "2p warpless" (level 1 done, saved 30 frames)(done by Lobsterzelda) and "playaround".
Misc
Longest submission threads
Longest forum posts (excluding TASVideosAgent's)
| # | Chars | Link | Author | Thread name |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 589985 | 230830 | Bisqwit | #2609: Bisqwit's NES Lunar Ball "no friction" in 36:52.0 |
| 2 | 67929 | 329784 | GMan | Adjustments to the player point/forum rank system |
| 3 | 65381 | 237985 | BadPotato | Suggestion for open source games |
| 4 | 63596 | 129579 | samurai goroh | Final Fantasy V Advance |
| 5 | 63454 | 458574 | Habreno | #5617: HappyLee's NES Super Mario Bros. "PAL" in 04:55.16 |
| 6 | 61987 | 153207 | Bisqwit | TAS full collection |
| 7 | 54753 | 457356 | Aran Jaeger | Battletoads & Double Dragon! |
| 8 | 53969 | 197453 | JXQ | GW-BASIC fun (QuickBASIC too!) |
| 9 | 51368 | 303551 | dwangoAC | #3463: TheAxeMan's NES Crystalis in 40:40.43 |
| 10 | 48627 | 399727 | Nach | lsnes emulator development (lsnes rr2-β23) |
| 11 | 48234 | 299216 | Bobo the King | Presenting: Smart RAM Search! |
| 12 | 47473 | 308534 | Mothrayas | Memorable IRC Quotes. |
| 13 | 45139 | 453171 | Aran Jaeger | Super Ghouls and Ghosts |
| 14 | 43692 | 70316 | samurai goroh | Final Fantasy V |
| 15 | 43058 | 433831 | Aran Jaeger | Super Metroid |
| 16 | 42549 | 441231 | Hetfield90 | Ori and the Blind Forest: Definitive Edition |
| 17 | 41839 | 30503 | samurai goroh | flash games...ROAR! |
| 18 | 41811 | 284164 | caitsith2 | Battle Kid 2: Mountain of Torment |
| 19 | 41613 | 324324 | STBM | [Guide] Faire un TAS |
| 20 | 40495 | 322392 | FatRatKnight | Port attempt of Multitrack Script to Snes9x. |
| 21 | 39580 | 231074 | BadPotato | Suikoden II |
| 22 | 38985 | 203471 | DarkKobold | Shining in the Darkness |
| 23 | 38123 | 284973 | FatRatKnight | Alien Hominid |
| 24 | 37815 | 415161 | Ferret Warlord | My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Discussion Thread |
| 25 | 37635 | 167808 | roxahris | Snes9x 1.43 improvement 15 by gocha |
| ∞ | 9708 | 458319 | feos | #5617: HappyLee's NES Super Mario Bros. "PAL" in 04:55.16 |
ffmpeg commands
libTAS
-c:v ffv1 -pix_fmt bgr0 -level 1 -g 1 -c:a pcm_s16le
ffmpeg lossless video and audio in the avi container (UT Video)
-c:a pcm_s16le -c:v utvideo -pred median -pix_fmt gbrp -f avi
ffmpeg lossless video and audio in the avi container (AVC)
ffmpeg -c:a pcm_s16le -c:v libx264rgb -qp 0 -preset ultrafast -pix_fmt rgb24 -f avi
ffmpeg lossless video and audio in the avi container (FFV1)
ffmpeg -c:a pcm_s16le -c:v ffv1 -pix_fmt bgr0 -g 1 -level 1 -f avi
x264 lossless video
x264 --qp 0 --preset ultrafast --input-csp rgb --output-csp rgb
PrBoom+ lossless video
cap_soundcommand "ffmpeg -f s16le -ar %s -ac 2 -i - -c:a pcm_s16le -y temp_a.nut" cap_videocommand "ffmpeg -f rawvideo -pix_fmt rgb24 -r %r -s %wx%h -i - -c:v utvideo -pred median -pix_fmt gbrp -y temp_v.nut" cap_muxcommand "ffmpeg -i temp_v.nut -i temp_a.nut -c copy -y %f" cap_tempfile1 "temp_a.nut" cap_tempfile2 "temp_v.nut" cap_remove_tempfiles 1 cap_fps 35
x264 with MSVC PDB
Using
VS2015 Native Tools Command Prompt go to your msys2 directory and type:
msys2_shell.cmd -mingw64 -full-path
This will open a new msys2 shell, in which the correct environment variables have been set, which allows you to compile x264 with VS2015. Now, go to your x264 directory and execute:
cd /to/your/x264/source
CC=cl ./configure --enable-static --prefix=${PWD}/installed --enable-debug
make
make install
Lua hook
event.onmemorywrite(function() print(emu.getregisters()) end, 0xBABE)
Debian build
sudo dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc -b
Side work
FretboardF
A Win32 tool for creating melody or scale structures and observing them on the standard fretboard layout.
Nestopia - Unlimited Video build
This is a fixed build of Nestopia 1.37 (the version stable for movies). Now it supports unlimited video size at dumping AVI, and RGB32 colorspace. Original Nestopia has video size limited by 1 GB, it just cuts right off anything after that mark. And it can't see any other codec than RGB16. I and spolan removed the filesize limit check. natt fixed RGB16 to RGB32. All codecs shall be supported now (x264vfw requires "Zero latency" checked not to desync a/v).
Video Game Maps ripped by me
- Zen Intergalactic Ninja
- James Bond Jr.
- Super Robin Hood
- Gargoyles
- X-Men2: Clone Wars
- Diamond Rush in progress