Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
This obsoletion debate is silly.
Hypothetical scenario:
I wake up, eat my morning hot pocket, and go to the submission page to see what is new. I find to my suprise, a guy named joseppi submits 347 runs. He has obsoleted every run on the site by 1 frame. "Wow, this guy has too much time on his hands." Here is how I would judge some of those runs:
SMB2 (U) princess only: There are a lot of new tricks discovered in this game and surely a lot more than 1 frame can be saved, probably like 30 seconds. There was even a 5sec improvement rejected for being sloppy.
Marble Madness (U): I have a wip of this that is 16 frames faster in level 2. Plus I know of two more optimizations. *Posts wip* This needs more work and those new tricks should be included in a new run.
Random NES game: I think brushy has a wip that is 2 frames faster at the first level. Try harder and find some more of these optimizations to clean this up more.
SMW96exit. The previous author sacrificed a few fadeout lag frames for the sake of doing impressive stunts. did the new author simply take these stunts out? If so, this movie is less impressive and probably be rejected. At the very least it should be debated, and the time saved should be weighed against a potential entertainment loss.
Mario 64 120 star. Ditto about sacrificing time for entertainment. These have been established as good choices. The new run would probalby need to include these. Also, in such a long movie surely more than 1 frame of improvement is possible.
SMB: wow, this movie was supposed to be perfect. Unless it is from the controversial "early input" that has already been decided as not acceptable then this movie will be accepted.
Donkey Kong: The last one was a 1 frame improvement. And it seemed unimprovable. This may be an impressive optimization.
Also, where/why the 1 frame of improvement has to be looked at. Did he saved 30 frames only to lose 29 in the next level? If so, this is sloppy and would need to be improved. IF every segment of this game is equal to the previous except for this 1 frame and there are no other known optimizations, then kudos.
Many runs on this site are to the point where only frames are left. This is a good thing because we are striving for perfection and achieving it. Putting a cap on the amount that a run will be improved will a) prevent some games from being pushed to absolute perfection unless they happened to get there the first time b) Encrouage minor frame sloppiness by authors who know that the movie is in no danger of obsoletion by mere frames.
Lastly, Someone doing such a thing is not trivial. Improving a run by 1 frame and ensuring that no segment of the movie is slower than the previous takes many hours of hard work. It bugs me that people think that someone who did this put no effort in. Also, this isn't going to "just happen" to even 1 run without good reason (it is short and nearly optimized already) due to this work load.
P.S. Sorry for contributing to the derailment of this thread.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
I know what you are talking about. And I considered that too. What I did was the better solution but I can't remember why I thought that.
Dunno, maybe I am an idiot.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
I think all these mk games are all the same. Having a run of each one is silly. Having said that, I found this one the most entertaining of them. Voting yes for this one as the one mk representative.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
058x are enemy hp addresses for most enemies.
The only exception are:
The level 4 bosses are located in 057D & E
The level 2 boss is in another address but I have lost that one.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
Zurreco wrote:
It's been tossed around in IRC a bit. No one wants to reject a run with so many yes votes (though so few are explained), but no one wants to accept the run either.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
Damn, yes the audio does desync. Turns out that I screwed up and left a step out of my encode process. The video is running at 60.0 while the audio is running at 60.1.
Sorry.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
like zurreco said, you can create this feature by good use of read only mode. I use it often when judging submissions. I keep a save state at the beginning of each level. If I see something I want to investigate further, I load state and get to that point and stop the movie and test whatever. Then I reopen the movie and loadstate again. This is hardly less convenient than the tools you propose.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
JXQ wrote:
This game does not make a good TAS. It's repetitive, and the "suck someone in and fall with them" is boring.
I see no reason to vote yes on a run that is repetitive like this, even if it "has to be", or if there are other published runs that are repetitive. (stupid reasons btw)
ditto to this.
I didn't see anything extraordinary or that can't be done in real time (though difficult)
More improtantly I don't see anything that would make this run stand out above the previous REJECTED submissions.
Voting No.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
This is the first time I have watched a grant path run. WOW. While being the slowest run, it is by far the most entertaining. Grant has smooth handling and allows for so many shortcuts.
The question now is, why do we still have the sypha path run?
The alucard version is the fastest so it is a no brainer any% categoary
The grant path sacrifices time for extra entertainment and show off the optimal charcater.
The sypha version shows off... Yet another clunky, hard to control cv character? Sure there are a couple of interesting shortcuts used with the ice magic, but still.
Anyway, easy yet vote.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
I would say about %30 of this game lends it self to TASing, the other %70 well...
As someone who hasn't played the game, I was bored. Also, I didn't say anything particular complex about the game. It seems that making a TAS of it is very straightfoward.
Sorry, I must vote no.
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
Congrats on completing your first submission. And also congrats on being the first person to obsolete JXQ ;p
I hope this will become an avi quickly. Or else I will have to find the hacked rom...
Emulator Coder, Published Author, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
(3602)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
Xkeeper wrote:
adelikat wrote:
<adelikat?> anybody going to bring up the fact that we already have a tetris attack and shouldn't have 2 runs of the same game?
* JXQ inserts prince of persia argument \o\ /o/
* The ten-thousand runs of Monopoly
* ...and Castlevania
* ...and SMB2US and J
* Battletoads NES and then Battletoads SNES
etc.
I'll vote once I can find the ROM.
perhaps I should have re-worded it to be same game & same goals
I have no problem with the 2 published monopoly runs as they have different goals. Ditto for castlevania, battletoads,etc.
