Posted: 7/27/2008 11:19 PM
Post subject: Important thought(s) of TAS'ing a PSX ISO
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p0rtal_0f_rain
Banned User
Joined: 12/5/2007
Posts: 742
Location: Gone
Regardless of any emulator that would contain re-records and other tool-assists, my biggest concern is any ISO that would load up data "on-time". My example is that let's say I did create a TAS of Twisted Metal 4. I did wait a certain time to get through the loading screens and continue my input into such emulator movie, and that I did sync things right. But when I go back and replay the emulator movie, there was a little delay in a loading screen and it threw my emulator movie into desync. It's not that we already have a PSX emulator with the tool-assists we need, but this is one thing that totally questioned me about the behavior of loading data. And here, when I say, "data", I mean the stages, the characters, the FMV's, the skits, that's what I believe. The moral of my theory here is that all of our computers are built differently. Some can bog down and make players and viewers wait longer for things to load up. Seriously, if the emulator movie is still playing and the ISO is still loading data, that's when everything can easily desync. My last thought is that if we do want to create an emulator movie, we can try to get the emulator to create "stops and resume points" during loading screens. In other words, if we complete a certain segment, we can put a stopping point as soon as we get to a loading screen and place a resume point immediately after a stage/event is fully loaded. The key here is try not to include loading screens as frames during emulator movie playback. Otherwise, I can't think of anything better. On the other hand, wait 20 to 30 seconds during straight emulator movie recording before resuming play. That will make sure the computer loads everything and have no excuse to desync the movie, it's still going through.
Posted: 7/27/2008 11:37 PM
Post subject: Re: Important thought(s) of TAS'ing a PSX ISO
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upthorn
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Active player (392)
Joined: 3/24/2006
Posts: 1802
Sega TAS of 2011 Sega TAS of 2010 Sega TAS of 2008 Sega TASer of 2007
Nitsuja has demonstrated with gens and its SegaCD support that it is entirely possible to make the emulator ISO read-times deterministic. That is not the issue with TASing CD platforms. The issue is the lack of a GoodROM set such as GoodNES or GoodGen, which would allow viewers to determine whether or not they have the correct rom image to play the input back with.
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Posted: 7/27/2008 11:41 PM
Post subject: Re: Important thought(s) of TAS'ing a PSX ISO
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Bisqwit
Editor, Active player (297)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7469
Location: Arzareth
Indeed. Any host-system delay/lag issues need not be brought into the emulator system; they can be encapsulated. The process is like this: 1. Game wants to load stuff from CD. 2. Emulator loads (it takes 1 second or 5 minutes, does not matter. Whether the underlying storage is a harddrive, CD, or a network share, does not matter.). 3. Emulator pretends that 2 seconds were spent loading (runs the emulated console in "loading delay" mode for 2 seconds worth emulated system time), and moves on.
Posted: 7/28/2008 7:58 PM
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RT-55J
Player (150)
Joined: 11/27/2004
Posts: 688
Location: WA State, USA
Has anybody figured out how swapping discs would be handled?
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Posted: 7/28/2008 8:03 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
RT-55J wrote:
Has anybody figured out how swapping discs would be handled?
Let me guess. 1. Game wants to load stuff from another CD (an ISO lying in the same folder as the previous). 2. Emulator tells it the disk is being swapped. 3. Emulator loads the data from disc 2 following the usual routine.
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Posted: 7/28/2008 8:07 PM
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Dada
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
RT-55J wrote:
Has anybody figured out how swapping discs would be handled?
As with the above concern, it doesn't really matter. The emulator is supposed to keep these "outside influences" away from contaminating the game's environment. If you can insert a new disk in 1 frame, the emulator shouldn't care. And if you pause the emulator, you will be able to swap the disk in 1 frame, no matter if it actually takes you a minute to find the right disk.
Posted: 7/28/2008 8:12 PM
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blahmoomoo
Joined: 2/1/2008
Posts: 347
I suppose that when the movie runs into a point where the disk is swapped, the emulator should pause and ask the user to point out the second disk's ISO or load the second disk. Once the ISO is selected or the disk revs up, the emulator would emulate the hardware detecting a newly inserted disk and the game continues. What would be even better is if the emulator also automatically saves state before prompting the user so if the wrong disk is inserted, the user can try again without needing to start the movie over. EDIT: I see everyone before me assumed that RT-55J was talking about while recording the movie... At least my post took the view of replaying it.
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