Posted: 4/29/2008 12:08 AM
Post subject: TASing the unTASable
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Cheezwizz
Joined: 11/2/2007
Posts: 103
I've said it before, I'm no TASer (my only TAS would probably be of Wheel of Fortune. It's up on youtube and it's not very good.) but I see a way around all this nonsense. First, I notice that TASing seems to always require saved input. If you want to TAS something that this doesn't seem to work with, I have a suggestion, though I can already tell it's going to be rejected. Perhaps emulators should be designed with avi rerecording in mind? Of course, because of how much this takes, you'd probably have to do everything in one shot regardless, and you'd need the space, but I think you'd be able to make recordings of all sorts of bizarre things with only avi recording and savestate capabilities if there was just a way to record the actual video rather than just the input. There'd be some drawbacks, but you'd at least get videos out of something that was otherwise impossible up to that point... IF my suggestion is possible in some way.
Posted: 4/29/2008 12:12 AM
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DeHackEd
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Former player
Joined: 11/6/2004
Posts: 833
While it might be fun for uploading to youtube and the like, this site demands input files so as to prevent any chance of video editting. Someone might knock the occasional duplicate frame off the video and make it look a bit shorter by a few seconds, and the effort to detect it would be relatively great. Some people have done this, and variations on TASing the un-TASable. I've written a library plugin that cuts the flow of time under Linux to a fraction of my choosing. I used it against Sprint's Flash Tetris game. Not an AVI recording, but I did manage to TAS a Windows app. :) The game has built-in input recording.
Posted: 4/29/2008 2:42 AM
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blahmoomoo
Joined: 2/1/2008
Posts: 347
Bisqwit, the founder of this site, is working on an output only TAS for Chrono Cross (PSX). As DeHackEd said, since the video can be manipulated and therefore unverifiable, Bisqwit will not officially submit it to TASVideos. Think of his project as an unprecedented TAS of a system that does not have verifiable TAS capabilities yet. Bisqwit patched pSX so it allows frame advance (but no slowdown, other than CPU lag) and hooked in a modified x264 video encoder to control his video outputs. You can see full details, progress, and a link to the related thread about this output-only TAS at http://tasvideos.org/Bisqwit/Projects/ChronoCross.html This project is somewhat similar to Bisqwit's TAS of PC Star Control II, although he was able to modify DosBox for limited input rerecording capabilities then. It was not accepted due to entertainment issues, but it was another unprecedented event in the TASing community. Somebody else on this forum was working on a patch for pSX that would support verifiable rerecording capabilities (i.e. input recording and replaying), but they ran into a major error that seemingly cannot be resolved without the source code. Until pSX releases source code for the emulator or the developers are convinced that they should make rerecording capabilities themselves, no PlayStation games can be officially submitted to TASVideos. [Edit by Bisqwit: Added link to the related thread]
<ccfreak2k> There is no 'ctrl' button on DeHackEd's computer. DeHackEd is always in control.
Posted: 4/29/2008 9:19 AM
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Cheezwizz
Joined: 11/2/2007
Posts: 103
well, I think I have an idea and everyone's already ahead of me on it. That's something. Actually, you know, if there was some custom or otherwise modified video format or additional file that adds in the same technical information that input files do, is there a chance that can be used to verify a movie?
Posted: 4/29/2008 10:08 AM
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Cheezwizz wrote:
Actually, you know, if there was some custom or otherwise modified video format or additional file that adds in the same technical information that input files do, is there a chance that can be used to verify a movie?
I cannot think of any means that could possibly work. Even if you snapshot the emulator state at every frame, there's no guarantee that the successive states have been accomplished by input alone, as opposed to, say, RAM editing.
Posted: 4/29/2008 11:09 AM
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Cheezwizz
Joined: 11/2/2007
Posts: 103
well, as I said before, doing things that way may well be the only way to do some things. Questionable reliability is just one of those things that you'd have to live with. In any case, they wouldn't be acceptable anyway, so it would still be good just for fun.