Joined: 4/11/2006
Posts: 487
Location: North of Russia :[
moozooh wrote:
zefiris wrote:
I just remembered there was a really good game to TAS... FURY OF THE FURRIES!
I think it'd be much easier to TAS this game on an Amiga emulator, since:
I did not know anything about Amiga emulation, But this idea is not any worse... But rerecording dosbox is the thing we have at hand already, and I don't have amiga version of furries =(
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I discovered the source of the crashes... It happens when the combination of loadstates causes the wrong number of scanlines to be sent to DrawLine (due to the fact that savestates can be taken in the middle of screen refresh, and that it is not always the same moment). I don't know any neat way to fix it. I devised a quick hack which allows me to finish SC2 without further crashes, but it won't work with any game that doesn't use standard mode 13h without scrolling register manipulation... I'm not going to include this hack in the patch.
creaothceann
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Maybe you can change it so that savestates are only saved at the top (or bottom) of the screen?
Joined: 1/3/2006
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I claim Manaic Mansion, forgot to mention Oh and Keen and Crystal Caves are also mine^^
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Maximus wrote:
This is all VERY exciting :) I can't wait to start TASing the good ol' sierra classics ... though populating a text parser using frame advance might become tedious (25 frames just for "hut of brown now sit down", but it would be SOOOO worth it :P)
Although I am a fan of Sierra classics (i.e. adventure games), I agree that most if not all would be boring to watch. P.S. On EGA adventure games, you can type whatever you want in the text parser while the character is walking around. Commander Keen games would be very interesting to watch.
Joined: 12/26/2006
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Since I understand this topic to be about the emulator per se, I've created another topic for discussing DOSBox-supported games we would like to see TASed. ; ) By the way... you're an awesome guy, Bisqwit!
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As already discussed on IRC, the biggest problem with TASing DOS games is that when a TAS is produced, the chances of someone else being able to view the movie (be it for verifying the authenticity of the movie, or for creating an AVI, or for other reasons) are close to zero. This, because of a myriad of different ways the game may have been installed and other files that may be present in the game's running directory, and also because of different options in dosbox that need to be taken care of but currently are not. Believe or not, whether you choose SB or GUS emulation for the game, will affect movie sync. Presence of saved games may affect movie sync. Presence of .bat files may affect movie sync. Heck, even the last-modification time of the game's setup file may affect movie sync. Due to legal issues, we cannot enable the downloading of the (commercial/registered shareware) games on this site, so "extract this zip" option is out. It is possible that we will have to devise new rules regarding the PC runs than we have done so far for console game runs.
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creaothceann wrote:
Maybe you can change it so that savestates are only saved at the top (or bottom) of the screen?
That would mean also changing the frame granularity. Doing so would mean that the point where input is read, is changed from the outmost CPU emulation loop into the innermost VGA circuitry emulation code. It would not be a move for robustness... Also, it could prevent input from being read alltogether when the display is disabled. But something like that could be considered. It is not an entirely bad idea.
Player (71)
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Couldn't the movie file contain information for the dosbox settings to change automatically when loading and playing the video file? Perhaps that could help a bit when it comes to configuring dosbox? Not just state that "You have the wrong settings", but to actually change them for you. Of course with a check box of some sort saying "Manually override movie settings", if you really think you could configure in some other way without desync.
SXL
Joined: 2/7/2005
Posts: 571
if we could not provide the game's file in a zip, maybe could we insert a crc/sfv file of the whole game's directory. if crc of a file is ok but last modified time is not, just change it. basically, a program that tries to make your version of the game resembles exactly like the one in the movie.
I never sleep, 'cause sleep is the cousin of death - NAS
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>Highness I'd rather go with submitting the dosbox.conf together with the movie file, to prevent settings being changed covertly without inspection.
Player (71)
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Aww... Swapping configs sucks. :D
Editor, Active player (297)
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Oh, I just realized. TASing games that utilize the mouse, might be extra challenging, if the game implements their own mouse driver. Because during frame advance / pause, you won't have any idea where the mouse cursor is, because it's the game which is normally supposed to draw the cursor, and the game is paused…
Player (71)
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Is it hard to write a plugin or something that you can point and click coordinates with the mouse, and the actually travel will take part in the game? In a paused mode of the emulator you click the button where you want the mouse pointer to be the next frame or something?
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Windows version created. EDIT: removed the rest of the posting to reduce confusion; refer to the first post of this thread instead. https://files.tasvideos.org/bisqwit/dosbox-rerecording-exe-a3.zip Here's the updated patch: http://bisqwit.iki.fi/src/patch-dosbox-0.70-rerecording-alpha3.gz I tested, and this Windows version is capable of playing back my movie. :) It opens and writes to "movie.dof" by default. Use keys were listed in a earlier post. It has no dialog boxes nor movie-related commandline options.
Joined: 4/11/2006
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Thanks ^__^
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It says I need SDL.dll to install.
Borg Collective wrote:
Negotiation is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.
creaothceann
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Former player
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Thanks a lot.
Borg Collective wrote:
Negotiation is irrelevant. Self-determination is irrelevant. You will be assimilated.
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Editor, Player (69)
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I started making a movie of the PC Mega Man, and I've discovered a possible bug. The game goes way too quickly at the default 3000 cycles, but I think it goes at a reasonable speed at 750 cycles (I only tried multiples of 250). Unfortunately, the playback seems to be at 3000 cycles, even though I recorded it at 750. Is this due to some configuration settings? I can post my dosbox.conf, if necessary. Oh, yeah, this happened with the alpha3 version. EDIT: Here's the config file.
Current Projects: TAS: Wizards & Warriors III.
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Is PC Mega Man an official Mega Man game? I have been under the impression that it is not… Re: playback; The cpu cycles setting is recorded into the movie header, and unfortunately it is done so before the configuration file is read. When the movie is played back, the cpu cycles setting is loaded from the header. Which means, the cpu cycles setting currently has no effect into movie making. It is a bug.
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It's a Mega Man game, but not really an official Capcom Mega Man game: http://www.mmhp.net/GameHints/MM1PC.html At least it's not "Pokemon Diamond" bootleg.
Joined: 5/22/2006
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Location: Denver, CO USA
heh that mega man ripoff is hilarious looking, they really tried hard with a whole 3 bosses. Anyways, I'm pretty excited about this, i think my first test project with this emulator is going to be...Abuse! EDIT: crap i forgot you use the mouse in Abuse, nm back on the search for a suitable test game
What would Mr Belvedere do? Probably eat some butter.
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I'll try to make mouse working. Basically the framework is now there, but the movie file is not yet extended to handle it. And it's not tested.