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Those are some hard questions. I thought up some too, also some on the easier/ more tractable end of the spectrum.
These are on the more practical end, can anyone think of others like these, that may or may not be possible in a given game?:
Can you complete Bowser in the Fire sea in SM64 in 0 'A' presses?
Can you get by the infinite wall in Windwaker early?
Here are some R&D related ones:
N64 emulation (although this seems to be in progress)
What are the limits of console verification?
Here is a less practical one I came up with:
Is there a repeating input sequence that can be used to beat super mario bros that is substantially shorter than that for a full length run? What is the shortest such sequence?
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Of late I have become a bit more interested in some of the more technical aspects of TASing, as opposed to just TSAing games (which has begun to seem a bit repetitive to me.) I guess I was inspired my Lord Tom's River Raid run and the recent work I did with micro500 on Treasure Master, which seemed really fun to me even though it wasn't directly making a TAS. So I got the idea of trying to make a thread similar to wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unsolved_problems_in_mathematics and see what some people think are significant open problems in TASing.
These can be anything from emulation to game RNG to verification, big issues or small ones, but I want to avoid things like 'I want to see ___ run.'
So does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Is there a certain game which you think is poorly understood that needs a lot of research?
What problem needs to be solved to move TASing forward a step beyond what is currently possible?
Or if you are feeling particularly bold or prophetic, what are the 'Millennium Prize Problems' of TASing?
I appreciate any input. : )
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Oh the spiked ceiling, yeah you get killed by the spikes about half way through trying to use the boost right from the beginning. The lizards ability/glitch to simply jump straight through the spikes is much more advantageous.
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mklip2001 wrote:
Ok, I finally got to see this. I get a gut feeling like you should still be able to boost with the morning star a little more, especially in the third nightmare level (instead of riding the lizard the whole way). But it's quite a bit faster than the published run, and it's plenty entertaining. Good job!
Do you mean the first nightmare level? He is hardly used in the third. I tested all the possible options I believe. Trying to get the second available lizard is definitely not faster. It may look like it should be faster to dismount the lizard after climbing the tree, but what prevents this is the time it takes for the dismount to occur and the fact that Nemo stops for several frames after each jump (while the lizard maintains his speed.) The dismount at the end does not cost any time. The combination of these factors makes keeping the lizard I believe 20 frames faster if I remember right.
Also regarding Mickey Mousecapades, I see the trick that needs to be done, but I can't get the same (and fastest) pattern of the snakes in the very first room, I wonder if it might be emulation differences.
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Randil wrote:
Nice improvement! Yes vote from me. :)
If I am allowed to think out loud a little, I do however suspect that rest of the TAS could use some improvement as well. But it's very hard for me to tell how much time could potentially be saved, and admittedly I don't have many suggestions except the good old "optimize movements". My gut feeling tells me that maybe 1 to 10 seconds could be squeezed out, probably somewhere around 5 (but hopefully more!). Aglar managed to squeeze out 10 frames from level 1 some time ago:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=213048#213048
But as I responded then, this game is not edit friendly, so any improvements found are hard to edit in, basically forcing you to redo the TAS from that point. This also means that small improvements might get lost in future RNG and lag.
Anyway, that's just a suspicion from my part, and I truly don't blame you for not doing it from scratch
I also read the SDA post about the wall zip with delight, and thought that it should have a huge impact on the TAS. But looking through the TAS now again, just like you concluded, it might not be so easy to implement since it only moves you to the left...
But again, nice job indeed! You should totally do Mickey Mousecapade next:
http://tasvideos.org/842M.html
I did try to improve the movement of the other parts of level 8, with no success (I ended up just patching back in your original inputs), so the odds that I could improve the previous levels seemed rather low.
I did look briefly at mickey mousecapades, but I couldn't even get the first snakes in the first room into the starting position you got, despite many different combinations of resets and start presses. Maybe I will return to it after doing Flashback.
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Link to video
This seems to be the best realtime run out there for this game. Should be a good guide for improving the TAS.
I might pick up this run.
Also can this page please be moved to the genesis section?
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Spikestuff wrote:
CoolKirby wrote:
I think you should go for the fastest sightseeing path.
The fastest longest route?
Yes this is the most consistent definition we came up with for what 'sightseeing' is.
The most levels you can visit in a single run is 26. Backtracking is not possible so in a single run this is it.
There are 4 such paths , one of them has an extra boss.
I'm not sure why Bob Whoops originally picked his path, maybe he just decided to do it, but the fastest path also shows off a neat glitch, so we are going with it.
Also submission should be soon! (again)
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21757470084283918
V2. I managed a much better boss fight, and made some other over all improvements.
It's still a little slower then the original, 936 frames vs 855, I'm not quite sure how to manipulate the blob attack, still working on that.
I think this is close to a final version, only few more things I need to look into.
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Here is a rough draft of level 8 with the new wand strats patched in.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21584580026670725
It's about 10 seconds faster. I think it should be 13-15 seconds faster once it's well optimized.
So far I'm not sure how to use the zips, it's tough since they only go to the left it seems.
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MESHUGGAH wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
So my question now is what should I do with this?
Improve it and submit it.
I have tried and failed (repeatedly.)
Well if anyone out there is interested, feel free to take the .bk2 as a starting point. I will be very impressed if someone can improve even a single frame of game play. At least then it can be submitted and a more correct record can be official.
Thanks for the replies all.
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Sorry I am still confused.
Flagitous' inputs remain the same (on non-lag frames), but the time should be 1:47.97 (bsnes) instead of 1:46.42 (snes 9x). There is no official way to fix this? For the purposes of accurate record keeping?
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I wasn't planning on submitting it, I was just wondering if the current publication file can be replaced with this one so it is more representative of reality. And if so what is the procedure for this?
I see the 'resyncing movies officially' thread, should I post it there? That looked like a discussion thread to me.
I'm not looking to get any credit or anything, I'm just wondering about the policy.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21288338289808557
Ok here is a faithful re-sync of flagitous' run. It plays each level exactly as he did. It is about 100 frames longer then his run. about 30 frames is lag, and about 70 is loading time.
So my question now is what should I do with this? Is there a procedure to replace older runs with ones on more accurate emulators? 1.5 seconds seems like a lot over a 1:46 run, it would be nice to have a more accurate representation.
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What is changing when those lag frames are being added in?
In my above example, if the machine state is identical at the start of the 12 frame sequence up to the jump, what is changing in instruction execution when the lag frame is added in the newer emulator? Can it change the final outcome?
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Hi,
I have a question about working with older runs made on older emulators.
I am wondering if it is always possible to achieve the same state an older run achieves on a newer emulator if you can correctly account for added in (or I guess in rare cases subtracted) lag frames in the right locations in the movie.
For example, if an old movie has the player running right for 12 frames before pressing A to jump, and the new movie on a new emulator adds a lag frame within those 12 frames, making the movie file 13 frames before the jump, will the resulting state at the jump always be identical? By state I mean RAM or even instruction level execution.
I ask this as I am having trouble syncing some parts of flagitious' Umihara Kawase run made on snes 9x improvement 9 to bizhawk 1.9.1. I have tried repeatedly, so I am wondering if it should at least be possible in principle so I know how much effort to put into it.
But I guess it's also a question I am interested in in general, since I have only limited technical knowledge about emulation.
Thanks for any replies!
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21207921798009862
closing in on a final version. right around 13 minutes now. A couple route changes led to significant savings.
ars will be working on adding the entertainment value back into the boss fights.
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21137506145337278
10 seconds faster then the published run. My guess is that ~15 seconds of savings is possible.
I'm not really familiar with, or much interested in, the specifics regarding what versions count as different runs or not. As of right now though I do believe the run can be ported to DS while avoiding the peculiar case in the any% run, so the option is there at least if nothing else.
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Oh I put the total time instead of the level time.
It's still possible to do tas time for DS since the physics are faithfully enough ported, one can just compare every level. Well let's see.
For now here is a file with ~ 5 seconds improvement over the published run, it's a start
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21071311858542402
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/21056573281904883
Here is a rough draft complete re-sync. It was not simple to do. There seem to be some peculiarities in lag and loading times that make it not easy to predict.
I will be posting a comparison of level times to get an actual comparison and see just how much extra lag there is.
Level - orig / new / diff
00 - 671 / 553 / (-118)
01 - 784 / 690 / (-94)
02 - 633 / 555 / (-78)
03 - 928 / 923 / (-5)
04 - 559 / 580 / (21)
05 - 479 / 487 / (8)
06 - 449 / 450 / (1)
07 - 544 / 556 / (12)
08 - 7734 / 7882 / (148) (Boss)
14 - 801 / 807 / (6)
15 - 963 / 950 / (-13)
16 - 921 / 920 / (-1)
17 - 793 / 805 / (12)
30 - 649 / 599 / (-50)
33 - 1007 / 1008 / (1)
37 - 1262 / 1228 / (-34)
38 - 1076 / 1222 / (146)
41 - 1061 / 1038 / (-23)
42 - 649 / 657 / (8)
26 - 957 / 956 / (-1)
31 - 1167 / 1170 / (3)
46 - 997 / 984 / (-13)
47 - 1319 / 1248 / (-71)
48 - 935 / 934 / (-1)
56 - 13422 / 13488 / (66) (Boss)
57 - 47707 / 47705 [end]
All that adds up to about -70 frames. So considering both runs end at about the same frame, overall ~70 extra lag/loading frames is not so bad.
Based on the run so far, there is nothing preventing the run from being ported to the DS and saving a lot of loading time, so we might yet find ourselves back on the DS.
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AndiHoffi wrote:
I am wondering about a detail in the medusa-fight: AFAIK, you shoot as quickly as possible. Shouldn't it help the to shoot the first shot from a longer distance and the last one from the shortest distance possible?
Since the first shot can be released sooner and the last shot takes shorter to reach the target, this should gain some time.
I vaguely remember testing this and I'm pretty sure she takes damage on the first possible frame for every hit, so shooting earlier would have no impact.
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jlun2 wrote:
What's that passcode at the end?
That is most likely the prize code for a second competition that was planned but never happened.
An interesting side note. There are unused Pizza Hut sprites in the game data that show up in the pallets for the carnival world and the game intro screen, so possibly they were originally a contest sponsor.
https://code.google.com/p/treasure-master-hack/wiki/Bonus_world_2_code_analysis
Here is the machine code if anyone is interested. The difficulty as micro500 noted is that not all of it is necessarily exactly as originally programmed. I put the level end trigger in a seemingly likely but still aribtrary spot. Also the code that resets the spring flag can also be changed and still work.
In some of his replies on twitter, Steven Ruddy originally (a couple years ago) mentioned that he might still have the passcode that loads bonus world 2 in his archives, but never responded with a firm yes or no if he found it or not. So that is another loose end.
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I managed to figure out the working code for the second Bonus world.
Here is a savestate:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7j3de93jsb8al1s/Treasure%20Master%20%28U%29%20HACKED_latest.zip?dl=0
The savestate works on a completely unmodified rom. Basically after I worked out what the code should be, micro500 was able to make it pass the internal checksum after the last step to make it run just as if it was input from the beginning.
However, finding out the pass code that let's you play the level through a normal play through of the game is quite another matter. Micro500 will be working on working backwards from the end code to what the original input was, but there is no garauntee it is possible, and a brute force search might still be needed.
In the mean time, enjoy playing this challenging level unseen for 20 years!
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I have a minor bug to report.
I am using bizhawk with tas studio, and I notice that when I try to copy and paste from one .bk2 file to another I get 2 extra frames, and the first extra frame has an up in it. Actually it doesn't always have an up, it seems random.
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Well I ended up back here afterall.
here is the complete resynced any % run. The first level is still off but the rest is very close.
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/20648132473254955
It's nearly 200 frames longer then the original, and ~150 of that is lag.
It really is too bad one small difference on the DS keeps it from going there. Otherwise it would be about 10 seconds faster!
It's still possible the sightseeing run can go to the DS, if the particular instance of that enemy capture is not used. Porting the run is not too hard, all you have to do is delete the lag frames to sync it up. Its a bit easier to tas on bizhawk anyway.
Oh and Samsara and ars4326 will be teaming up with me for these runs. Team Mission InTASible will have a submittable run yet!
