You really smashed this TAS with super speed! It was fascinating seeing the usage of all the different characters' weapons/abilities to break multiple targets simultaneously. Actually went back and watched it a second time through, after reading the submission notes.
Very well done, yes vote!
For Paperboy, I mean that when I run the bot script, I need to use --blank 3 instead of the usual --blank 1 to get the game to start. It has nothing to do with emulation differences.
I always need 1 blank frame, I guess the first input gets eaten somewhere by the bot, or maybe just by the power on pulse or something, but I have no idea why I need 3 for Paperboy. It could be DMC related, and what I am really seeing is 2 inputs getting lost to DMC glitch, I just haven't investigated it much yet.
It could be a problem with the TAStm32 too, idk how that firmware works, or maybe it's a problem with the interface script (which I also don't use nor understand). However, this game doesn't appear to suffer from the DMC glitch. I've checked on hardware, the game only polls a single time per frame. And besides, both the TAStm32, and my own device, has clock filtering and handles redundant polls within a given frame (if a game happens to employ that technique).
However, I did notice that this movie doesn't sync in FCEUX, when using New PPU, and where it desyncs is different than when I try on console (dumped using Old PPU).
Did you have to resync this movie to make it work on BizHawk?
Also Paperboy is the only TAS I try that requires 3 blank frames to get things syncing, every other game requires 1, so another indicator that something is up.
You mean adding 1 empty frame to the TAS so it syncs on console? Some of my NES TASes from around 2016 has notes in the submission text about adding 1-2 empty frames to an FCEUX TAS to make it sync on BizHawk. So.. you required to add even one more empty frame? Or this doesn't covers loading parts of a game between levels, only at the very start of powering up?
The 1-2 blank frames between FCEUX and BizHawk is just due to a programming difference where FCEUX takes a bit longer to "start up" than BizHawk. I don't recall if it was determined yet which behavior was more accurate to the console. Either way, most of the time, if not always, those few frames are lag frames in both emulators, so it shouldn't affect the dumped input for console verification at all. But yes, it will affect emulator sync when moving movies between those emulators.
When I first started verifications, I was told that sometimes you might need to insert a blank frame to get TASes to verify, however, that has never been the case for me. I think this belief may have come about from a scripting bug that ViGrey discovered where the index can be off-by-one when dumping inputs with a script that doesn't account for this.
With paperboy, it sounds like there's something else going on. I could probably try adding a couple blank frames to the dumped inputs and see what happens.
Edit: Idk if Alyosha has a resync for bizhawk, but adding 2-3 frames to the original FCEUX-dumped TAS, doesn't affect the attempt in any way. It consistently desyncs for me by running into a fence, just as it did when I tried this in the past (without adding frames).
Ooo it's been awhile since I got to use my calculus muscles but I'll give this a shot.
My brain wants to use the x axis instead, so by swapping x and y the curve becomes: -3y^2 = x^3 - x
It was nice that the volume equation canceled out the square root.
[4410] NES Mega Man 2 by Shinryuu in 23:38.98
Doesn't work for me. The zip glitch at 13:17 fails to work on console. Though I'd like to see someone else try it too.
Castlevania very likely uses uninitialized RAM for RNG. Maybe Gimmick! as well (or at least, I was getting inconsistent desyncs). Super C and Battle City seemed the same way.
I thought I tried Rockman 1, but don't see it in my notes. And I haven't tried the Rockman 4 hack, nor the Double Dragon game.
When you have time, could you please post in the Publication Maintenance thread, with all of your recent verification videos (whose publications haven't been updated yet), so we can get that stuff updated.
A Moon would be every movie nominated for an award. [...] But Moon would have a completely clear and objective meaning.
What meaning would it have exactly? Just that a single person decided to say "I nominate <movie>"? because that's all it takes to nominate movies for awards.
I've read (can't remember the post or Discord discussion) about some people wondering how to restyle the site for this. Here is my idea, how does it look?
I'm all for having it show the console verification flag. While I am biased, I do feel that console verification is an important thing to recognize. If anything, including the commentary flag is probably the most important one to show. Even though not many publications have commentary, I feel it adds a lot for the casual viewer, so they can better understand what's happening while they watch.
I'm not sure Fastest Completion is necessary, at least not right away. Perhaps as more categories are published, this will become a more notable flag. Of the 106 non-obsoleted movies published this year, 67% of them have this flag.
Styling-wise, displaying all these extra flags might make the list feel a little cluttered though.
[2] Moons would just be a tag in the same vein as Console Verified or Commentary, denoting that the run is "non-standard" and was voted on by the audience to be a part of the site.
Arc wrote:
The logical continuation of this thought is that Moons could be every movie that gets (legitimately) nominated for an award in any category.
Arc wrote:
Using Awards nominations only
...
The suggestion to incorporate Moons into the Awards via nominations would fulfill both [1] making the former Vault the default, biggest 'tier' and [2] granting the audience the power to elevate certain well-received 'default' movies up to Moons.
Basing it solely on whether it was nominated or not, doesn't seem like much of a vote to me. Looking back at this past year's award nominations, people didn't even have to justify their nominations. Simply listing out movies in a post was enough.
Additionally, I don't like this idea because newly published movies would have to wait potentially a whole year, to have a chance of being recognized for Moons.
Is #1 saying that categories like any% wouldn't have any chance of having the Moons flag?
Since it wouldn't be tiers anymore, but 2 independent concepts, there's no negative connotations in "not having player imposed goals".
So say there was an any% submission, that was acceptable and had feedback that showed it was a very enjoyable movie, would there be any flags available to recognize that it had high entertainment value?
feos wrote:
but 2 independent concepts
Wait, I think I'm a bit lost, which independent concepts are you referring to?
Is #1 saying that categories like any% wouldn't have any chance of having the Moons flag?
feos wrote:
4. Turn submission polls into a 0-10 scale
5. Change the poll question back to "Should this be published?"
I like the idea of #4, but does a scale really fit the question "Should this be published?" As in, would people be likely to primarily use 0 and 10 in place of no and yes? Additionally, if these results were to carry over as publication ratings, does that question also fit with what ratings are supposed to represent?
Perhaps more importantly, would judges prefer having a "Should this be published?" metric or an entertainment/enjoyment metric (like we have now, but as a scale)?
This is a change I've been hoping for, for a long time. The stigma I've seen around Vault movies has become really annoying. Just because it didn't happen to be entertaining to the people who watched it at the time of submission, doesn't mean it's a waste of time to watch and appreciate. You could have an extremely technical TAS, on a game that's inherently very boring to watch (maybe there's slow movement, or a lot of walking/waiting, long transitions, etc).
It's always seemed to me that people generally regard Vault as more of a dumping ground for boring movies that are still acceptable for technical reasons. A sentiment akin to "This is so boring, just put it over there with the others, out of the way." I recall coming across this movie where the focus on entertainment was so strong, someone argued that it shouldn't have been made at all.
As I understand it, and believe, besides superplays, TASes are supposed to be about making the perfect/fastest speedrun for any given game/goal. There have been numerous movies that did just that, but then are ignored or overwhelmingly-criticized because it wasn't also entertaining. Consider, that the shorted TAS accepted on this site, is in the Vault, solely because it was not entertaining enough. (hard to be entertaining when the run is less than 1 second long, and yet it got 63 yes votes)
Unfortunately still doesn't verify, at least from reset. But over all 6 attempts, it's failing consistently. Around frame 935ish, it fails to grapple properly, and falls instead.
The streemerz runs now desync on dev build, which is promising, but I don't yet have a dev cart to try them on console, so moving on to DMC testing for now.
Where can I get this dev build? (nevermind, tikevin got me a link)
I can try dumping and test on console.
Donkey Kong, Nightshade, Roger Rabbit all sync on console through full runs.
Was it necessary to resync these TASes in order to verify them? If so, do you have the resynced movie files available somewhere?
Alyosha wrote:
I've also made some other small updates to how input is polled so that games like Bionic Commando which hit some edge cases now console verify as well. this game always gave trouble before, but the emulation was never wrong, only the communication between emulator and console.
What do you mean by the communication between the emulator and console? Also, if small updates had to be made, how was the emulator never wrong? Isn't input polling, a part of the emulation?
Alyosha wrote:
Console verification. This uses the most recent movie posted on this thread. While I used the FCEUX version to dump with, as I noted previously, the converted bizhawk version is identical once dumped for verification. For the time listed, I don't know which version is the more accurate frame count, so for now I went with FCEUX's 5,800 frames.
Link to video
Console verification. This used the movie included in the submission. If the submission is accepted, and if FractalFusion's edit that includes music is used instead, I'll re-verify/record with music as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OPQ8BzmjY8
Edit: This has been obsoleted :P
