Posts for feos

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TheProJamer wrote:
I would like to take this opportunity to point in particular to Half-Life 1, and the way that framerate has an impact on TASing. Tons of fundamental speedrunning tech rely on the framerate, and not necessarily in a consistent way, either. Control over framerate (or more accurately, frametime) is highly valued in that game and others that use the engine. The ability to have a high framerate is valued equally to the ability to have a low framerate. To limit TASers of that game to a value like 60 would be to tell them not to make an optimal TASes at all. Here's an example of a TAS (made with an injector tool called Bunnymod XT) that takes heavy advantage of the framerate: https://youtu.be/WsuYogNgDSo
Can the user control framerate during regular play within the original unmodified game, and outside of any internal replay functionality?
Doomsday31415 wrote:
But if the viewers can't view a video above 120 FPS anyway, what's the point of encoding beyond that?
Have you read what I linked?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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If we can't display the video of a movie accurately, it breaks the encoding principles I linked above. And if we allow 1000fps or 360fps, we inherently allow 1 billion fps, because where to draw the line and why? Any number that isn't commonly used nor intended is arbitrary. And we can't design rules that have loose ends like that.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Having ridiculous framecounts in movies is another topic, and it's not the reason we would want to limit the framerate for. We've always aimed to provide encodes that accurately depict the contents of the movie. http://tasvideos.org/EncoderGuidelines.html#Introduction http://tasvideos.org/EncoderGuidelines.html#VideoCapture We can't just ignore these principles. Moreover, even if high fps is allowed, where should it stop? 1000fps feels arbitrary. Actually, any framerate that's not commonly used is arbitrary here. Then, what about TAS tricks? What if some trick only works at 4021fps? Also, how is one supposed to check the game on the matter of tricks? Try every idea at literally every framerate? And how are we supposed to judge optimality of a given run? Sorry that I forgot to mention all this in the OP, but this all defeats the questionable benefits of allowing unlimited framerates.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Post subject: Limit on framerate for PC games
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Last year there was a thread about DOS games, where it was decided: - If gameplay is tied to real world time and doesn't speed up or slow down depending on CPU speed, CPU speed for such a game can be maximized to reduce lag. - If gameplay is tied to CPU speed, and the game slows down or speeds up along with CPU config, CPU speed must be set to whatever was common when the game was released. This only talks about JPC-RR and its capabilities. There is one more aspect that can depend on the CPU speed - framerate of the video that comes from the emulator. DOS games don't use framerates too much above 70, and JPC-RR doesn't output arbitrary framerates, so for DOS games, even if they send frames to the VGACard at 1000fps, it's not a problem when it comes to displaying the video and dumping it to the file. For PC games, this may be problematic. When VSync is used, games use to render frames at common framerates the monitor and the video card are configured to. The most common framerate is probably 60fps. There are monitors that support up to 240fps. Video cards support theoretically unlimited framerates, it just depends on complexity of a given game and what processing it involves. For high resolutions, high settings, and modern games, framerates GPUs can output don't go above 300. Now, with VSync disabled, a game may run at uncapped speed. If this just removes lag, we can handle this the same way we handle DOS games. If gameplay speeds up, we must limit framerate to whatever it's meant to be played at. But what if the game has fixed real world speed for everything, but happens to render frames at uncapped framerate? A 1000fps video is unwatchable due to heavy lag, and due to countless dropped frames as far as the monitor is concerned. Let alone human eye and what it can percept. Hard limit for PC games at least for linux seems to be 1,000,000,000fps. So if you're running a game on a quantum computer, my first question is WTF are you smoking, and the second question, who needs that framerate in games? Due to inability to watch encodes at insanely high framerates, we have to limit maximum allowed framerate we let the games run at. Because we can't simply drop frames from encodes on a regular basis only to make the watchable. Unique events may be happening of frames we're dropping, and there can be no way to just dedup them. Any artificial limit seems to be arbitrary. VSync for any game that can render frames at uncapped framerate sounds like a good limit to me. But even then, the computer can be configured to run at framerates above 60. Where should we stop? 240fps? 60fps? Something else? And why there?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Because more than a half means majority.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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After a short talk with Nach, we've agreed to set a cutoff like this: When the option to select an alternate character is available from the start, and it offers more than a half of unique levels or bosses (or otherwise majority of gameplay inherently becomes exclusive to that character), we count this char as an alternate game mode, and therefore allow for Vault as a side branch. If an alternate character results in less than a half unique gameplay, it counts as simply different character, and only the fastest character choice is allowed for Vault.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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It's Initial Time in Sync Settings. Set it to whatever you want, just check which one is more optimal now that you know about it. Not mandatory for every Saturn submission, but might be a way to affect some RNG like desmume's firmware settings do.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Yeah, with general input data coming from a peripheral, I'm not so sure we must limit ourselves to how we handle game images. When its about whether we're still playing the same game anymore, we always should be sure that yes, we are, the game image is 100% authentic and unmodified. But when it's about regular input data, just sent from a peripheral that allows infinite variety of data, we only need to be sure this data is free, reproducible, and considerably optimal. But there hasn't been any specific decision on that yet. Thought I'm sure the numbered list of requirements about the nature if this input will persist. Because not following them introduces potential for serious problems.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Screenshot suggestions?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Are subtitles in that movie still relevant?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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This has been predicted a month ago:
feos wrote:
Omnigamer wrote:
I think the rules written in feos's post are fair. The only thing that would be good to clarify is that an image may not just be a disc image - other unique games might use special peripherals for physical media such as barcodes, pictures, audio waveforms, and more. Assuming that the emulator was suitably developed to interact with this content, they seem like identical cases to CDs.
I generally agree, but I can't be so certain in a rule with unlimited scope. I'd prefer to limit it to game images for now, and when something different appears, use the spirit of the rule, clarifying it if needed. Otherwise, it'd be better to namely list things whose input can potentially be used in a similar way. But I can't say "X, Y, Z, and anything similar". In some cases we might never need this limitation probably.
Relevant rule that only talks about "arbitrary" extra images, but can be expanded to talk about any arbitrary data that the game may obtain from a peripheral: http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#RomImageMustBeIntegral Thread explaining why we can't allow literally arbitrary data from such peripherals: Thread #20426: Clear cut rules for arbitrary extra CDs? /0
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I live on another planet, so tomorrow is now for me. Wiki: PostCompletionInput
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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FCEUX's taseditor has an option to enforce trimming the movie upon loading a state. Config -> Branches restore entire Movie http://www.fceux.com/web/help/taseditor/index.html?ProgramCustomization.html Please try it and tell if it helps, I can implement it in tastudio easily. As for crashes, grab the latest dev build, and always report all the crashes you're getting: steps to reproduce and stack trace. With no reports, how would they go away, right?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Congrats! Also, steps please? Meanwhile, I found some old tool that's supposed to run Flash apps, not sure how good it is. https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/hoary/i386/swf-player/0.3.2-2 Dependency: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/swfdec0.3/0.3.2-2 Which in turn depends on liboil0.2, which doesn't exist anymore, only 0.3: https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/liboil So one would have to compile swfdec with libpil0.3 installed I think.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I'll handle this tomorrow.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Yes as I said, we prefer this input to be included in the movie, for the sake of completeness and being self-contained. I might highlight in the rules that this is preferred in general. Also I feel that SDA's definition is not what we want at all. They split at freezing character because it's easy to notice: you just keep slashing or punching air, and once the animation stops, you split. But you don't need to do it to make the ending happen any sooner. As I explained above, this cutoff is vague and doesn't easily apply everywhere, so enforcing this would indeed be a bad idea. Perfect for a user maintained wiki page though.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Publication time isn't changing. And we have several types of publications in that regard, and their movies stop at different points. What if we use something like SDA timing for the end? How do they define it?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I don't object to adding a textual note to every such publication, telling what time it gets if you stop it at the last frame of real gameplay. But clearly not to the point of adding a secondary movie to every such publication. Not sure where to put all your research tho. If it's in this thread, the rule is always obviously visible, which helps people to get used to it. And the announcement already happened, so why not keep this discussion in one place? What about a wiki page?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Having post-completion input inside the main movie is preferred, unless the author explicitly wants to exclude it. So no need for truncated versions.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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The manual disagrees.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Post subject: Secondary game mode vs. Secondary character
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If there are several game modes available from the start, we allow every such mode to be published in Vault, counting each of them as vaultable any%. It's also possible to have a movie that beats all such modes in one go. http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#GamesWithAdditionalLevelSetsOrGames If there are optional characters available in the game (not necessarily from the start), we only allow the fastest one to be published in Vault as an any% branch. http://tasvideos.org/MovieClassGuidelines.html#UsesASuboptimalCharacter The question is, how do we distinguish between them? If we have several chars from the start, and they play the same levels, but bosses differ, is it a secondary game mode? If some chars can access route deviations while the game otherwise remains the same, is it a secondary game mode? What if just a few levels are different? If the first release of the game had a char as a DLC, and then it was included and became available from the start, though it plays through the same levels, is it a secondary game mode? In S3&K, Knuckles plays different levels than Sonic, so he can arguably be called a special game mode. In Shovel Knight, the Plague character was a DLC, and then was included in the game. His movie is shorter. He plays the same levels as Shovel Knight. I would not dare to call Shovel Knight a suboptimal character for that game...
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Are we playing lottery again?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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