My body is a MACHINE that turns ADHD MEDICATION into TAS RECORDINGS OF NICHE FLASH GAMES.
More seriously, I am simply fascinated by the idea of creating TAS videos for platforms that present technical challenges in syncing and recording for the TASer, the less videos for a given platform the better. My thought process goes: niche game for a platform with poor TASing support? neuron activation. I plan on eventually using Hourglass, but that's been stalled by the fact that Windows XP runs like total trash under VMWare with Hyper-V enabled. Hyper-V native runs better, but that lacks any form of real guest additions because it's meant for enterprise use, so getting files on and off the VM would be a total slog. Thankfully, PCem/Windows seems very promising, and I can always disable Hyper-V temporarily if I really need to.
FINISHED:
- Flash Ball Revamped 2: Metaphysik (link) (Judging Underway)
- Flash Ball Revamped 4: Amplitude (link) (Pending Judgement)
- Flash Pico's School (link) (Judging Underway)
- Flash K.O.L.M. "any%" (link) (Judging Underway)
- Flash K.O.L.M. 2 "any%" (link) (Pending Judgement)
- This Is The Only Level TOO "RTA" (link) (Pending Judgement)
- This Is The Only Level "any%" (link) (Pending Judgement, might require further modification)
- Super Mario Bros. Special (Sharp X1) (link) (Pending Judgement)
- Jet Pac (ZX Spectrum) (link) (Pending Judgement)
- Mighty Jill Off (link) (Pending Judgement)
TO-DO/IDEAS LIST:
- K.O.L.M.I.A.M., to finish off the K.O.L.M. any% trilogy.
- K.O.L.M. and K.O.L.M. 2 100%, to finish off the 100% duology (K.O.L.M.I.A.M. doesn't have 100%, only any% and any% deathless)
- MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11 games under PCem/JPC-RR, because funy
- Doing this would require recording a verification movie for installing MS-DOS 6.22 and then Windows 3.11, no FreeDOS since FreeDOS doesn't play nice with Windows
- Microsoft Entertainment Pack: Chip's Challenge, Pipe Dream, Rattler Race, Rodent's Revenge, SkiFree, JezBall, Maxwell's Manic, the FreeCell impossible game?
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Mighty Jill Off: classic freeware indie platformer for Windows released in 2008, inspired by Mighty Bomb Jack; this is PRIME TASing material, and is ideal for a Windows NT game since it runs on Windows XP, doesn't use the mouse, and is 2D, meaning it should be able to run in either Hourglass or PCem/Windows.Done! - Sexy Hiking: a "classic" freeware trollgame for Windows released in 2002 by the infamous Czech developer Jazzuo, notably serving as the inspiration for Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy. It kinda sucks and is a glitchy mess, but we do these things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Uses the mouse, so no Hourglass, only PCem; it's also allegedly make in GameMaker, so I might be able to manage some sort of Linux port, but it doesn't open as an archive so the standard "YoYo Runner" method isn't gonna work. It also forces fullscreen besides, which I'm lead to believe that libTAS doesn't like.
- Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing: No elaboration required. Hourglass would DEFINITELY choke and die trying to run it, but we have PCem/Windows for that. I'm pretty sure that the day that I (or anyone else) makes a working submission for this is the day that God gets tired of our shenanigans and smites the TASVideos servers with divine fury.
- Windows Vista pack-in games: Purble Place and InkBall. Trying to run Windows Vista in PCem seems like a world of pain, so I would need to use Hourglass; while Hourglass works best on XP, people have managed to make functional videos in Windows 7 and even 8.1, and these games are simple enough that I give good odds that they actually run. Well, except for one issue: these games use the mouse. I might be able to get them to run in XP by using some Extended Kernel/Alky for Applications magic, but that would almost DEFINITELY violate technical soundness guidelines.
- THIS JUST IN: As it turns out, InkBall actually released with Windows XP tablet edition, and Purble Place has undocumented XInput (Xbox controller) support; while Hourglass doesn't actually support XInput, only DirectInput, there are programs that can bind keyboard keys to XInput inputs.
- Hypnospace Outlaw: My description wouldn't do this game justice, buy it and play it. It occurred to me that this game runs natively under Linux, speedrun WR at ~10min RTA, uses Construct 3 which can run under Chowdren for libTAS support and I already own it on Steam, so it makes a good candidate for testing.
- EDIT: It doesn't work. Bruh
- Phillips CD-i Games: MAME has "Good" rated support for the CD-i with the exception of games which require the Digital Video Cartridge, which it largely doesn't support; however, that doesn't matter, because we all know what games the CD-i is best well known for...
- Hotel Mario: Promising, but also total RNG hell- it really entirely depends on if I'll be able to re-roll the RNG seed by replaying a given stage over and over or not.
- Tetris: More promising, but only because Tetris is basically a solved game at the TAS level. This would basically be solely for showing off the technical possibilities of CD-i demo recording via MAME//libTAS alongside a groovy soundtrack and nothing more.
- Zelda games: I'm gonna be honest, I think that making TAS recordings of RPG games is mind-numbingly boring, but it would be amiss of me to not put these games on the list.
- Zelda's Adventure Game Boy port: yes, it exists, and apparently it's actually good? It's free on itch.io, something to consider
- The Apprentice: From what I've heard it's one of the best CD-i games, to the extent that a very dedicated (and probably insane) developer named Shikotei created a full source port of the game to Windows, requiring only an ISO image of the CD-i original to provide assets (meaning me linking this isn't against the rules). While the port is built for Windows, it just so happens to use Unity, meaning that porting it to Linux for recording with libTAS is totally possible, which is exactly the type of jank I love.