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Posted: 9/21/2015 2:05 PM
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Alyosha
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ok, so 0196 is counting how many backpack guys come on screen for a given section of the level. So at the time the glitch happens, we have 0195 at 09, and 0196 at zero. Now when the glitch happens, this could be when a backpack guy is about to appear on screen, which would change 0196 to 1, this happens a few frames before he visually appears on screen. If the stack pointer got down to there, and then 0196 changed like that mid-frame, it could change a return address to something that could end the level. Unfortunately, I've never seen the stack get below 01DD, so if this is indeed how the glitch is caused, we would need to find another glitch that corrupts the stack somehow first before recreating it. 0196 is also the highest address in the stack region that gets changed by the game code (at least in level 1), so if the glitch is related to the stack getting overwritten somewhere, there is a good chance it is here. EDIT: well, since the game doesn't use or initialize part of the stack anyway, I edited the ROM to jump to RAM each frame in the unused area. From there I tried to edit the stack values to make weird jumps but so far all I do is crash things. Even if I jump to the routine that normally sets stage end flag it crashes. So, no leads at this point.
Posted: 9/21/2015 1:48 AM
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Alyosha
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Well I narrowed down on a few places where some slight glitches happen in the boss fight, where memory also doesn't get reset after dying and hitting end. The first case is address 016A. It changes to 7D as the boss comes on screen and it starts scrolling on its own into the boss area. If you happen to die while it is still scrolling, it gets stuck on 7D. The screen still stops scrolling properly, but normally it goes to 80 if you don't die. Then it goes to 83 after a few frames. It can also get stuck on 80 when dying. This doesn't seem to effect too much, but it is at least a glimpse of non-standard behavior. More interestingly, there is some uninitialized stack memory between 01C0 and 01FF. The game initializes memory in an interesting way. First, it initializes 0000-01BF to 00. Then, it sets 0200-07DF to 00. Then, for 07F0-07FF it sets to F1-FF for whatever reason. 07E0-07EF get set individually to various values. 07ED seems the most interesting. It is set to the value of $8000. So I'm guessing this has something to do with memory banks. Anyway this leaves 01C0-01FF untouched, presumably expecting this to be the maximum extent of the stack. This interesting because values kind of close to this are changed at the boss stage. For example $0195 also seems to control scrolling in some way. So right now my guess is that something went wrong with the stack, most likely related to choosing end after dying on the first boss. Oh one other important thing I noticed is $0196. 0195 seems to keep track of what screen number you are on, while 0196 seems to count how long you have been on that screen. However, sometimes 0196 behaves oddly. Usually it increments once per second, but occasionally it increments much quicker, I haven't figured out exactly why but it is the next thing I will look at.
Posted: 9/19/2015 3:34 PM
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Alyosha
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Nice! Yeah the physics changes for the DS are frustrating. But, glad to see a run of this game that is caught up to the present state of the art.
Posted: 9/18/2015 2:25 AM
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Alyosha
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Oh nice a video, thanks zallard. Pressing 'end' definitely doesn't clear everything, but it does clear the object table. Well, so far here is what I know about how a level ends. When boss's HP hits zero, his state changes from 2 to 3 (wherever it spawns in the table between 04B8 and 04C7.) This triggers a routine which eventually sets 003B=1. When the main loop sees that 003B=1 , it changes 002C from 4 to 8 (via loading #$08 into accumulator and storing it in 002C.) This state remains until the explosion animation is finished. I haven't found the address for the timer yet. After the animation ends, 002C goes up to 9. The player loses control at this point. This is curiously done with an INC instruction, even though every other case is not. After that, if you are on the ground, the next frame 002C gets set to #$81 and the ending animation takes over. If you happen to be in the air, it won't change to #$81 until you hit the ground. To end the level as in the video, setting 003B to either 1 or 81 both work. Setting 002C to 08 works. Setting it to 9 eventually ends the level, but not in the same way as the video, at least not in my testing so far. So far I can't find anyway to distinguish between these working cases, it would be nice to narrow it down further.
Posted: 9/17/2015 7:40 PM
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Alyosha
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Oh so that's why the backpack guy can shoot, ok thanks (clearly I've never played Contra, and certainly never made it to level 5.) Anyway, about the only interesting thing I can make happen so far is by giving a bullet a bad state, I can overflow the table , since the stationary guns that rise from the ground shoot bullets faster then they are cleared from the table. But all it does is crash, and so far I have no plausible way to give any object a bad state. So I think I will look over the ROM and see how else I might set the stage end variable. I also might try to recreate the video but am not very confident I can do it. Well its fun to experiment at least, the first level of contra must have been played tens of millions of times, I'm surprised such a glitch is unexplored. Of course it's also possible its just a random error, only 1 bit needs to be changed to end the level.
Posted: 9/16/2015 6:38 PM
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Alyosha
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So I started looking into the warp that Cartina posted here So far, I have at least found the address that can call stage end sequence. If you set $002C to 08, it will end the stage exactly as is done in the twitch video. Normally, the game sets this value to 8 after the last hit on the boss. (In normal play it is 4.) In terms of what this does, 002C is used to set the jump address for Jumps from 0002, which is where jumps are executed from in a normal frame. The first jump is always to CE30 The second Jump changes from CEE3 when 002C is 4, to CFEA when it is 8. The next step after this is D01F when it is 9. I haven;t tracked down exactly where 002C is changed from 4 to 8 normally yet, but this seems like a good start. EDIT: working backwards a bit, the same behavior can be obtained by changing 003B to 1 (it's normally 0) EDIT 2: ok, here is how 003B is normally changed to 1: 
$E626:BD B8 04  LDA $04B8,X @ $04C7 = #$03                   A:00 X:0F Y:00 S:F4 P:nvUbdIzc 
           $E629:F0 2A     BEQ $E655                                    A:03 X:0F Y:00 S:F4 P:nvUbdIzc 
           $E62B:86 83     STX $0083 = #$04                             A:03 X:0F Y:00 S:F4 P:nvUbdIzc 
           $E62D:0A        ASL                                          A:03 X:0F Y:00 S:F4 P:nvUbdIzc 
           $E62E:85 04     STA $0004 = #$09                             A:06 X:0F Y:00 S:F4 P:nvUbdIzc 
           $E630:20 59 E6  JSR $E659                                    A:06 X:0F Y:00 S:F4 P:nvUbdIzc 
             $E659:BD 28 05  LDA $0528,X @ $0537 = #$11                   A:06 X:0F Y:00 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzc 
             $E65C:0A        ASL                                          A:11 X:0F Y:00 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzc 
             $E65D:A8        TAY                                          A:22 X:0F Y:00 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzc 
             $E65E:4A        LSR                                          A:22 X:0F Y:22 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzc 
             $E65F:C9 10     CMP #$10                                     A:11 X:0F Y:22 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzc 
             $E661:B0 18     BCS $E67B                                    A:11 X:0F Y:22 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E67B:98        TYA                                          A:11 X:0F Y:22 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E67C:E9 20     SBC #$20                                     A:22 X:0F Y:22 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E67E:A8        TAY                                          A:02 X:0F Y:22 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E67F:B1 80     LDA ($80),Y @ $E6CA = #$C7                   A:02 X:0F Y:02 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E681:85 02     STA $0002 = #$B0                             A:C7 X:0F Y:02 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC 
             $E683:C8        INY                                          A:C7 X:0F Y:02 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC 
             $E684:B1 80     LDA ($80),Y @ $E6CB = #$8B                   A:C7 X:0F Y:03 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E686:4C 6B E6  JMP $E66B                                    A:8B X:0F Y:03 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC 
             $E66B:85 03     STA $0003 = #$D5                             A:8B X:0F Y:03 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC 
             $E66D:A4 04     LDY $0004 = #$06                             A:8B X:0F Y:03 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC 
             $E66F:B1 02     LDA ($02),Y @ $8BCD = #$40                   A:8B X:0F Y:06 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E671:85 04     STA $0004 = #$06                             A:40 X:0F Y:06 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E673:C8        INY                                          A:40 X:0F Y:06 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E674:B1 02     LDA ($02),Y @ $8BCE = #$E7                   A:40 X:0F Y:07 S:F2 P:nvUbdIzC 
             $E676:85 05     STA $0005 = #$00                             A:E7 X:0F Y:07 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC 
             $E678:6C 04 00  JMP ($0004) = $E740                          A:E7 X:0F Y:07 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC 
             $E740:20 83 C1  JSR $C183                                    A:E7 X:0F Y:07 S:F2 P:NvUbdIzC
04C7 is the state of the enemy in that slot. Normally, this will be the boss. His state changes to 3 after the last hit. Now, other enemies can normally occupy that slot too. And their state also changes to 3 when they die. That is why the next check at 0537 occurs. This checks for the ID of the enemy in that slot. The boss has ID #$11, so this is the only time when the check BCS $E67B passes. After the check passes, the code continues onwards until eventually changing 003B to 1, the jump to E740 is what we need. Now when I change 0537 to 11 when another normal enemy has just died (has state 3) the explosion sequence occurs as if the last boss died. When I just change 003B to 1 manually, no explosion sequence happens. In the twich video, there is no explosion sequence, so I believe either 003B or 00C2 is being changed independently somewhere. But, there are very few places where this occurs, not sure where to look from here for edge cases where this might happen. Very little is happening at the time of the glitch. EDIT 3: hmmmm, there is something in the normal level that spawns with ID $#12. If I can get this object to spawn in 04C7, perhaps somehting interesting will happen? Well, looks like 12 is the bridges, so probably nothing there. EDIT 4: So I've been playing around with object IDs and their associated state variable. So far there are several combinations that cause glitchy things (or crash the game altogether) I haven't found anything so far that looks like a bad jump to end the level though. One neat thing I did find though is that the running backpack enemies actually have a gun. If you set their state variable to 4, they will point a gun at you, and on rare occasions will even shoot (a single bullet.) I guess this was something that was just never used.
Posted: 9/16/2015 11:38 AM
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Alyosha
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Nope, not a rookie, but thanks for the vote of confidence AngerFist : )
Posted: 9/16/2015 11:32 AM
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Alyosha
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I'm not sure how relevant this is, but I did notice on the youtube encode for Return of the Jedi, several comments expressed disappointment that the run wasn't done on Jedi mode. Not sure if this was just general viewers or people close to the site or what, but I think at least it does show that picking easy mode is not necessarily what people want to see, regardless of reason.
Posted: 9/15/2015 11:27 AM
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Alyosha
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xxNKxx wrote:
I think this run still need optimize more than, many points I think have waste time. Example 11:23, why red character didn't go left then jump up?
This run can eventually use a version 2 you are right, though personally I will wait for a next-generation emulator to do it. I would love to see a run that can sync on console. But in the particular instance you mentioned, it is actually better not to go up with pink as fast as possible, because as soon as you scroll the screen upwards, the cloud at level 8 is spawned. This creates a bad cycle for blue, and ultimately costs time since I need both characters for the bonus. There are several other spots like this throughout the game, actually the level 3 bonus improvement is an example too, (compare bonus 3 to bonus 19 to see what I mean.) EDIT: Oh, I just realized that Dimon's temp encode is the version with the seals instead of yetis. I'm surprised it syncs, and also surprised to see those sprites as I don't think I've ever seen them before.
Posted: 9/15/2015 2:39 AM
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Alyosha
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To beat each level , you need only reach the start of the bonus stage. You can promptly walk off the ledge and still beat each mountain after this point, which would result in 'no bonus' at the score screen for both players (and of course be several minutes faster.) This is why the run isn't simply 'any %' But if others find it misleading, feel free to suggest a more descriptive category name.
Posted: 9/14/2015 6:31 PM
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Alyosha
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Would it be appropriate to simply define 'any %' as the fastest completion, regardless of difficulty? It would be something of a reversal of the current guideline, but at least it would be simple and consistent.
Posted: 9/14/2015 6:24 PM
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Alyosha
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^ Thanks a lot for the temp, mine wasn't even close to ready.
Posted: 9/13/2015 5:53 PM
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Alyosha
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25485810655090243 Almost there now. Just 8 levels to go. 16-24 contained some of the hardest levels so far. Unfortunately, I found an improvement to level 19 bonus which is also applicable to levels 3 and 11. I didn't have the will to go back and resync all of the levels, so I will have to concede ~4 seconds of improvement in this run. Generating mountains is simply too tedious to spend the time on.
Posted: 9/12/2015 4:05 PM
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Alyosha
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25461917360020787 Alright, slow going but things are looking a little better now. Thanks for all your helpful notes Tompa. I roughed out the rest of the first level and implemented most of the improvements you noted. Still having trouble on the second bonus in 1-3 though. I'm about 5 seconds behind your 1.43 WIP. But most of that seems to be coming from 1-4. I'm moving much slower but not really sure why, but I haven't gotten that far in analyzing your WIPs so I'm sure I'll improve it once I get there in the comparison process, for now I just wanted to have something to work with. Lag does seem to be particularly challenging in this game. Often when I squash a lag frame somewhere it reappears elsewhere, or in the loading times. Still overall its not as bad as I expected. Slow and steady will get us there. EDIT: Oh, it seems I have 1111 player points : ) For some reason I suspect this was done on purpose since I'm pretty sure I remember seeing 1110 there, so thank you to whoever did that!
Posted: 9/11/2015 2:35 AM
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Alyosha
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Samsara wrote:
For the most part, what we need are people who are actually willing to take the time to provide test cases on harder/easier difficulties for these runs instead of just having threads full of people assuming that one difficulty is "better" than the other.
I like this idea. I'm willing to volunteer to make a test case if the run is sufficiently short (ideally under 10 minutes, so rejection wouldn't be a big deal) What runs are best suited to this? 'One can argue endlessly about anything.' Sometimes you just have to actually do something and see what happens.
Posted: 9/11/2015 1:43 AM
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Alyosha
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25426434681228682 Alright 16 levels done, half way there! Once I got into a good pattern of how to figure out what mountain paths I wanted, I was able to move pretty smoothly. The only thing I couldn't get is the same timer at level 12 bonus, even though I'm sure I complete it at least as quickly as the published run. But the timer doesn't exactly work very well so I'm not worried about it. At this point in the movie I am about 20 seconds ahead of the published run.
Posted: 9/10/2015 12:10 PM
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Alyosha
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Warp wrote:
Alyosha wrote:
My opinion would be that this should be stated as: hardest difficulty is always publishable/preferred, while any other difficulty is publishable if the audience finds it sufficiently entertaining.
What happens if someone submits a TAS of a game using the hardest difficulty and it gets published, and then later someone submits a TAS of the same game at a lower difficulty, and the audience finds it entertaining?
If the hard mode TAS was entertaining in its own right, they both can stay in moons. If it less entertaining it will go to vault and the easy mode one to moons. In the final case, where the audience found the easy mode one not entertaining, it is rejected. So basically I'm saying that the default category for any game is 'hardest difficulty any %' For most games, 'Hardest difficulty 100%' will be another default category. These can always at least make it to the vault. 'Easy' mode TASes would need to meet the same entertainment requirements as any other potential category for that game.
Tompa wrote:
From an outsider's perspective, just knowing that the game was played on Hard will make the run feel more impressive by the difficulty choice alone.
I think that is part of the aim of TASes, after all most people aren't TASers and won't actually look into it any deeper, as you suggest in the next sentence there.
Posted: 9/10/2015 11:58 AM
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Alyosha
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sorry I don't have the original anymore, but when I tried it a second time back when this first happened it worked fine. I must have done something pretty silly somewhere along the way, I just don't know what it was.
Posted: 9/9/2015 10:21 PM
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Alyosha
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In my opinion the real difficulty is the question of what precedent, if any, publishing a certain game on a certain difficulty has on subsequent submissions of that game. In the current case of Return of the Jedi, arandomgameTASer chose easy difficulty as subjectively the most entertaining choice. So if someone does happen to come along and submit a run on Jedi difficulty, what would happen to it? Is arandomgameTASer setting a precedent that should be followed? Can the 2 runs be published side by side? Does a judge have to rule on preferred difficulty at the time of acceptance/rejection? The difficulty guideline doesn't seem to address any of this, especially since the argument it is using is also subjective entertainment value. In its current state, I see the difficulty guideline as at best determining whether a run goes to moons or vault, but in this case it should be made clear that essentially the same run can be made on 2 different difficulty levels and both are publishable. My opinion would be that this should be stated as: hardest difficulty is always publishable/preferred, while any other difficulty is publishable if the audience finds it sufficiently entertaining. This would put difficulty level on the same footing as any of the other category choices besides the default any% / 100% and be less ambiguous. It also means 'easy' difficulty TASes would be rejected/accepted on the grounds of entertainment value, not difficulty level, more in line with other categories. If the community is specifically aiming for this NOT to be the case, and that each game have a preferred difficulty, my suggestion would be making something more clear and less subjective, but I'm not sure how this is possible.
Posted: 9/9/2015 12:00 AM
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Alyosha
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version 3 emuVersion 9816 rerecordCount 7990 palFlag 0 romFilename Ghosts'n Goblins (U) romChecksum base64:jDybBBOS+O8G9rDHQyxYnA== guid 0A767817-53D4-B7F0-18BB-74FACB9C0DFB fourscore 0 microphone 0 port0 1 port1 1 port2 0 FDS 1 NewPPU 0 comment author Arc v9 |1|........|........|| |0|........|........|| |0|....T...|........|| Well, the published movie certainly does start with a reset. I see Gay's point though and am also not sure how starting from a reset wasn't noticed in the submission, and more importantly, the publication process. If the run relied on Arc's instance of FCEU already having existing values written to memory, I would think this would desync immediately when a publisher went to encode it. But maybe the fcm file contains a savestate or something, I'm not really familiar with it, but I'll look into it now, along with when the spawn is set. EDIT: well thankfully this site has really good movie file format documentation:
[1] Even if the header says "movie begins from reset", the file still contains a quicksave, and the quicksave is actually loaded. This flag can't therefore be trusted. To check if the movie actually begins from reset, one must analyze the controller data and see if the first non-idle command in the file is a Reset or Power Cycle type control command.
So it seems that is exactly what happened. EDIT 2: The key to enemy spawns seems to be at 00C0. It is used to set the X register which effects locations of enemy spawns. Here is enemy spawn being set at power on: 

        $8468:BD A7 84  LDA $84A7,X @ $84AD = #$A0                   A:06 X:06 Y:03 S:37 P:nvUBdIzc 
        $846B:18        CLC                                          A:A0 X:06 Y:03 S:37 P:NvUBdIzc 
        $846C:6D AF 05  ADC $05AF = #$60                             A:A0 X:06 Y:03 S:37 P:NvUBdIzc 
        $846F:99 AF 05  STA $05AF,Y @ $05B2 = #$90                   A:00 X:06 Y:03 S:37 P:nvUBdIZC 

Here it is after reset.

        $8468:BD A7 84  LDA $84A7,X @ $84B6 = #$68                   A:0F X:0F Y:03 S:37 P:nvUBdIzc 
        $846B:18        CLC                                          A:68 X:0F Y:03 S:37 P:nvUBdIzc 
        $846C:6D AF 05  ADC $05AF = #$60                             A:68 X:0F Y:03 S:37 P:nvUBdIzc 
        $846F:99 AF 05  STA $05AF,Y @ $05B2 = #$90                   A:C8 X:0F Y:03 S:37 P:NVUBdIzc
00C0 is 0 at power on, but after resetting the value does not get reset, it is at 3 at this point. So, it seems that the true enemy spawn at power on is the 'bad' one, oh well.
Posted: 9/8/2015 4:06 PM
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Alyosha
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http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25373110677269009 OK here is a test WIP of the first 3 levels. I tried to do it just by watching the youtube encode to get an idea how difficult it is going to be to figure out tricks and just how hard this game is to TAS overall. So far it seems to be not that bad, I don't think it will be too hard to make steady progress, especially with bizhawk and taseditor. I put a couple passes into this WIP to at least get a basic level of optimization in it, but it's nothing special. @Tompa: if you can look that over and see how much you can improve, it will give me an idea of how much effort optimizing will take versus just making rough drafts. I also went back to level 1 after level 2 and saved some frames just to see how bad the desync will be. I was pleasantly surprised it wasn't terrible, this game is no Umihara Kawase where it was a complete mightmare. So maybe I can rough draft more of the game while you are optimizing Tompa just to get more of the inputs in there. That is most of the work anyway.
Posted: 9/8/2015 11:12 AM
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Alyosha
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GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
Seems to me like its a memory issue in FCEU 98.16 Everything I tested so far has no impact on zombie spawn. I found only 2 ways to get the 'good' spawn. One is to start the game and let the first wave spawn in the normal 'bad' spot and then reset the game. The other is to wait on the title screen until the demo starts. If you reset at this point you will also get a 'good' spawn. All gameplay videos I see online also seem to have the usual 'bad' spawn. The one video that had a good spawn had a non-zero high score on the title screen, so clearly it started from a reset. DO you have the memory address of enemy position Arc? With that we can trace back to see where it is set and know for sure. but right now it looks like unless you can verify on console that you can get that 'good' spawn from power on, the spawn from FCEU 98.16 probably is an error.
Posted: 9/6/2015 2:46 PM
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Alyosha
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GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/25327477891633667 First 8 levels, 1/4 of the total done. I made a mistake in level 1 bonus and had to fix it, which turned out to desync everything else not surprisingly. It was very tough getting the other levels to sync, but enough runs of my script eventually got it working. Level 8 was the first one I was able to do more or less constructively. I could decide where I wanted openings to be and put conditions in my script to match them. I'm pretty happy with the results.
Posted: 9/6/2015 2:38 PM
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Alyosha
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GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
Great! Let's make this run happen! I don't expect this to be a fast or high energy project, so for now this thread should suffice for collaboration. It wiil take me a few days to wrap my head around the game and try to understand what's going on in your wips. I'll put together a test WIP of the first few levels in my usual fashion and then we can start really optimizing it from there. I usually learn the most from iterating runs anyway. Thanks for the offer to collaborate Tompa, I'm sure this will be a very interactive project, especially since you are already the expert at this game. Hopefully it doesn't go the way of your other attempts. I don't mind revisiting things a few times to get them right, but after that I tend not to look back, so I hope we can keep some forward momentum and not endlessly restart.
Posted: 9/5/2015 10:30 PM
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Alyosha
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GBA TASer of 2023 Homebrew TAS of 2023 Gameboy TASer of 2022 NES TASer of 2015
I'm surprised that DKC 101% hasn't been updated in so long. It was one of my favorite games growing up, and I've been wanting to TAS a higher profile game for a while now, so I think I'll be giving it a try! Does anyone know if there is anything more recent out there? Or if anyone is/was working on anything already?
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