Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
I improved the first level by 414 frames... by slowing down and turning around.
User movie #638359921219033424
I still don't understand when the level ends, so I couldn't improve the last level, and the later levels overall look quite solid. But 400 frames on the first one is kinda a lot IMO. BTW I killed most of the humans there which gave me 24 frames among those 414.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Αsumeh wrote:
I could go on with a few extra key takeaways that I feel is worth mentioning, but that would pose the risk of me mini-modding
We don't have a problem with users explaining correct things to other users.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
I think console sync is a good reason to have a slightly slower movie, as the primary publication or at least as a secondary file if we value absolute fastest known emu record.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Captain_Forehead wrote:
I decided to make some personal TASes of my own (because that's what I do) and wanted to encode it into an AVI file. When I do so and end it, I took a look at the file and found my entire AVI file had been separated into separate smaller files. Each file contains a portion of the movie that is roughly about 3-4 minutes. I don't think I made an error when setting up the AVI recording, but would there be any reason why this is happening? I'm stumped.
They are most likely split on 2GB mark, which is where windows AVI writer breaks if you exceed that, so emulators split it before 2GB. You can view them all combined in VirtualDub if you open the first one and then open the next one using File - Append AVI segment (that would append them all). Exporting from VD won't break them at 2GB because it uses newer tech.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Letting enemies fly away and then waiting for them to return (sometimes from different sides of the screen) is a huge waste of time.
-161 frame in the first level-160 frames in the first 3 levels of the last loop
Just like all your other submissions I've checked, I can't consider this run a finished product. While manipulating everything to behave perfectly would be a giant project, even slight tweaks to your actions can make the flies change their behavior in your favor, it should just be planned out at least a little bit.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
On Discord, Merl_ wrote:
feos wrote:
These messages tell you that you've actually played the game "til the end" and "finished" it. Showing them subjectively feels appropriate for a game titled Unlock Everything.
There are tons of instances where I skip unlocks to save time. This doesn't make sense to me.
You don't skip unlocking those 2 messages though.
Merl_ wrote:
Also I would consider the jukebox and time trial mode to be post game "content"
The modes themselves are, but the messages are part of the ending sequence.
Merl_ wrote:
feos wrote:
If showing the ending dialogs is valuable as opposed to skipping them, we can have an alternate movie for encoding that doesn't skip anything but slowly goes through those dialogs.
I'm not sure what you mean by valuable?
Worth having in the encode without skipping them ASAP.
Merl_ wrote:
By an "alternate movie for encoding", are you talking about the extended input thing spikestuff suggested?
Yes.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
2 movies are still fine, especially if it's justified in some way and not just absolutely random (tho absolutely random would maybe still be fine lol).
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
g0goTBC wrote:
I have a question regarding verification movies that are used to verify TASes that start from dirty SRAM.
Can the verification movie consist of two bk2 files, which would be played one after the other?
We've never limited this so I think there's no problem in having multiple movies, but since you can resume recording from a playback mode, why start a new movie?
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Since the faster you shoot the enemies, the sooner the boss spawns, killing them optimally is the main point of the game. Each time you shoot you fire 3 bullets, so it may look like shooting is not done very precisely, but this can't be helped (however it can be used to our advantage since there's more room for rotation adjustments).
Manipulating enemy positions is actually very easy. You shoot way in advance and then after shooting and before the enemy spawn, you adjust your direction to make the enemy spawn right where your bullet already is. Since enemies tend to get farther away from you as you rotate, you need to rotate in a different direction when the bullet is already around the edge of the screen.
108 frame improvement of the first level.
Link to video
I haven't checked if the frame the object spawns in memory has any relation to the frame it gets onscreen and to the angle (is it faster to spawn/kill them in corners or in the middle?). Neither did I check if delay between their spawns can be manipulated. But since your progress is displayed on the screen, it makes sense to compare different strategies on certain progress chunks. If the new chunk can't be accessed earlier anymore, that means the pace is good.
Once again I don't think this movie is optimal enough for publication, and attention needs to be paid to actually trying to kill enemies ASAP.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Merl_ wrote:
Am I allowed to disagree with what you deem to be the endpoint? I think unlocking the ending is pretty clearly the end of the game. There isn't any gameplay after that either. It seems pointless to go back and skip through the cutscene
Here's how we resolve it in our movie rules:
Movie Rules wrote:
The movie must be complete
Your submission must play the game from the beginning, and must finish the game, or reach the most suitable endpoint the game allows. [...] Examples of suitable endpoints are:
A definitive ending, such as a credits sequence.
See how the game itself responds to your further actions:
These messages tell you that you've actually played the game "til the end" and "finished" it. Showing them subjectively feels appropriate for a game titled Unlock Everything.
While the credits don't automatically start, I think a perfect way to end the movie in a climactic (and definitive) way is to manually launch them at the end.
If showing the ending dialogs is valuable as opposed to skipping them, we can have an alternate movie for encoding that doesn't skip anything but slowly goes through those dialogs.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Scribble wrote:
Go for an "as pure as possible" approach, removing savestating, slowdown and/or RNG pathcing
How would you TAS it then? Or do you mean sync compatibility with an untasable version of the game? So then again, how do you ensure sync?
Scribble wrote:
or take the opportunity of being allowed to modify the game and make a pleasant TASing experience?
Pleasant TASing experience is the most important thing, because it attracts more people and incentivizes better works. And guaranteeing sync is a part of that. But we also don't want it to be a hell to maintain for the developer, so we don't demand anything unsustainable (at least not anymore). Accuracy and authenticity are nice to have, but not at the expense of devs and TASers.
In other words, we always sacrificed accuracy for determinism.
Scribble wrote:
The game also uses multiple rng variables:
Each entity has their own RNG that they call
A "World" RNG that is responsible for chunk generation as well as block RNG
The world RNG is somewhat tricky as you have to watch out to not disturb world generation, but make block RNG deterministic...
But the main thing I am getting is that I should rethink my RNG patching, which I will gladly do...
Is it possible to change what system time the game reads whenever it decides to roll RNG? libTAS controls that and it's quite robust, unless games do non-deterministic crap in other threads.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
InputEvelution wrote:
CD loading times in particular seem to present a difficult hazard for TASing, as loading earlier savestates after PCem has started reading from the CD image seems to cause desyncs, and even strange errors from XP itself on some occasions:
Running the movie from the very start seems to give consistent timings without errors, but combined with XP's strange lag inconsistencies, it seems game installation in particular is likely to be a pain to optimise.
I think this proves that game installation deserves to be in a separate movie if a CD is used. Do you know if floppy disk installation has the same problem?
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Looks awesome!
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Oh god so it makes a difference in the end D:
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Happened before but I don't remember which submission. libTAS wouldn't save movie duration until you advance one more frame or something, fixed in 1.4.5.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
We accept PCem Windows XP movies for submission now, and in addition to ourguides we also need to have a place for all the discussion about this setup, results of tests and all sorts of useful advises, which we could add to the wiki guide.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
We allow libTAS to run PCem as a Windows XP machine emulator.
Only TASVideos releases of PCem are allowed. Such releases are marked st to indicate single-threading - modification required for determinism, not available in the original PCem. libTAS is needed because PCem doesn't have any TAS tools.
Huge thanks to people who helped making this possible: keylie, slamo, InputEvelution, YoshiRulz, fsvgm777, and all the testers!
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
BTW this time Hourglass did crash a ton. I thought of the upcoming xp-pcem-libtas thing which is ALMOST ready, tho its only limitation is it's locked at 100fps, which may not map perfectly onto all games compared to environments which allow you to control framerate. But IMO it's still worth it lol, because no crashes and a cool input editor.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Checked the last thousand frames and saved about 70 frames again, also ended input earlier which resulted in total 137 frames on that final segment.
User movie #638336909747562432
I tried applying this common tech to jump cancellation, and interestingly, if you press Space to jump and then Ctrl on the next frame, the jump continues. But if you press Ctrl to jump and Space on the next frame, the jump cancels instantly, allowing you to jump more rapidly in that section where you have to jump 50 times. Somehow I also didn't have to wait on the yoku block before jumping from it.
I don't think this submission is acceptable as is.
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.
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.
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Site Admin, Skilled player
(1238)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11287
Location: RU
Which skip?
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.
These messages tell you that you've actually played the game "til the end" and "finished" it. Showing them subjectively feels appropriate for a game titled Unlock Everything.
While the credits don't automatically start, I think a perfect way to end the movie in a climactic (and definitive) way is to manually launch them at the end.
If showing the ending dialogs is valuable as opposed to skipping them, we can have an alternate movie for encoding that doesn't skip anything but slowly goes through those dialogs.Running the movie from the very start seems to give consistent timings without errors, but combined with XP's strange lag inconsistencies, it seems game installation in particular is likely to be a pain to optimise.
