Posted: 12/31/2009 8:15 AM
Post subject: X-COM: UFO Defense
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sgrunt
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Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
You probably know the X-COM games better in their original DOS incarnations (or perhaps the later Windows Collector's Edition), but rather good ports for the first two games to the PSX featuring 3D-rendered cutscenes and significantly better music took place at some point. This version of the game supports the mouse peripheral, and would probably best be TASed using it. A run of this game would be all about luck manipulation (and figuring out what affects the RNG in this game). To wit: The win condition is to destroy the alien brain on Mars, which is the second part of a two-part tactical mission; to start on this mission you need a craft capable of flying to Mars and the knowledge of your destination. Both of these require large amounts of research, but not too much in the way of prerequisites - everything for the Avenger can be scavenged from one intact UFO (Alien Alloys, UFO Navigation, UFO Power Source, and Elerium-115), and the research chain leading to the alien destination requires an alien commander, found either aboard a Battleship or inside an Alien Base. The approach, then, is to manipulate a UFO to land and an alien base to be built near your starting base. The folks over on the SDA forums appear to have this down to a fine art by now; the most recent iteration I can find is 13:20 (segmented, despite being one video file; listen for jumps in the music), with clear room for improvement with the significantly better luck manipulation and mouse control that a TAS can allow for. What does everyone think? Is this worth pursuing?
Posted: 12/31/2009 12:48 PM
Post subject: Re: X-COM: UFO Defense
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Aqfaq
Editor, Expert player (2480)
Joined: 4/8/2005
Posts: 1573
Location: Gone for a year, just for varietyyyyyyyyy!!
Sega TASer of 2008 Lucky TAS of 2008
sgrunt wrote:
Is this worth pursuing?
Yes. Very large flying yes.
Posted: 12/31/2009 4:19 PM
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nesrocks
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Joined: 5/1/2004
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Location: Rio, Brazil
It sound like it's very suitable for TASing. I'm also looking forward to it.
aka Nesrocks http://www.youtube.com/user/UoBtExFODA https://nesrocks.com https://twitter.com/bitinkstudios
Posted: 1/7/2010 3:13 AM
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sgrunt
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Former player
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I have discovered two things to this point: 1) TASing with a mouse is a pain in the you-know-where; 2) this game lags horribly. It appears possible that mouse movements might affect the RNG, which would make luck manipulation a very... interesting... task. Anyway, here's a rather rough WIP to demonstrate some of these concepts. I do a little bit of base setup and miraculously get a UFO to land almost immediately afterwards - I don't know what I did to do that, but a couple of previous attempts just had UFOs flying around; I suspect I moved the mouse a little bit differently to get that to work. If nobody sees obvious flaws, I'll experiment with manipulating the battlefield into yielding a desirable outcome for a quick battle. Perhaps I'll do that anyway just to get a feel for it. EDIT: I've been playing a little bit with the battlefield yielded by the above movie, which seems like it will be good to continue the run: the UFO is a Medium Scout - the smallest possible UFO with a power source - and hence with the least number of aliens and the smallest - 40x40 - battlefield. Some exploration suggests there are 7-8 Sectoids, all but one of whom are in the UFO - the remaining one is within the line of sight of the starting position and he can be shot on the first turn. The UFO's along the same edge of the map but in the far corner, but having all of the Sectoids in one place should make up for that. Most importantly, mouse movement does indeed affect the RNG. This means that luck manipulation is going to be an exceedingly finicky affair, but that it should be possible to come up with highly unlikely results. 600 or so rerecords later, I managed to hit and kill the first Sectoid with one shot. This is with an Aimed Shot; trying to hit with a Snap Shot ate most of those rerecords, and an Auto Shot would waste too much time. I did hit with an Auto Shot relatively quickly, but I would rather not lose frames in that fashion; besides, hitting with one shot is that much more impressive when you're dealing with red shirts. EDIT2: Look! I figured out how to encode the WIP and put it up on DM!