I always wanted to see a TAS of a real time strategy game. Guess I can try to make one. (Or at least try to jumpstart enough interest...)
There are a few possibilities here.
- GBC Warlocked
- DOS Dune II
- DOS C&C
- DOS Warcraft I
Warlocked is not a very nice game, but GBC emulation should be rock solid by now. I'd be worried about trying to work with a DOS rerecording emulator at this point. The gameplay is not very fast. Lag can happen as well. It might not be very entertaining, but probably easier to set up and get started on.
Dune II has its share of bugs and strange behaviors that can be exploited. A few people tried it on the Genesis, but I think DOS is the way to go.
Not sure about the last two and any other possibilities. Thoughts?
Remind me, what did the DOS version of Dune II have going for it that Genesis didn't? I only remember screen scrolling speed, but I'd rather have that limited to a more watchable state (the game doesn't have a lot of action anyway, so you can still multitask efficiently).
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The DOS/Genesis thing is more or less arbitrary.
1. I like the DOS graphics better.
2. Mouse use. I like the sidebar!
3. No one tried it yet.
c-square managed to do mouse stuff his SQ4 TAS, but no one else has given mouse-use in DOS the ol' college try. Be wary, it would be a very difficult first TAS. If you get discouraged easily, I'd start with a more stable and well known emulator.
I'm working on Warcraft II, on PSX, and could use help!
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Yeah, I want to give the mouse a try. That's one of the points here. The mouse is a must for an RTS.
I actually never made a serious attempt at a TAS before. I don't expect to finish, I'm rather hoping to generate enough interest for someone to take over eventually. (Or prove that there is nothing interesting in crazy mouse bouncing around.)
Till that happens, I will do my best.
First things first: Which game? I think Dune II at this point, but I'm open to suggestions. I'd love to do Super Dune II Classic, but that being a hack of a hack...
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I'm for Age of Empires II, actually.
Yes, I'm aware it's a Windows game. But it turns out it has its own internal recording format that's incredibly sync stable (from what I've tested... which admittedly isn't much). This makes it simple to use VM related tools to make a run.
Though, the obvious problem is making a game actually entertaining... perhaps a 8 way player verses player match?
Ok, I got the source code for the hacked version of the emulator.
Thanks, c-square! Mouse is go!
I will build the source and get set up over the weekend and start work after that.
Still thinking in terms of games (Warcraft I is nice...), so if you have any suggestions...
EDIT: Going with Warcraft I.
I had a post written here, but forgot to press Submit. :/ But you went with Warcraft 1 like I was going to suggest anyway, so I guess that's OK.
I know one trick in one of the human (I think?) dungeon levels, there is a way to kill the boss from across a wall which ends the level. Also I know that the pathing is pretty bad. Will you start a topic in the DOS forum?
Most RTSes (and many TBSes, for that matter) have an internal massively sync-stable recording format for the purpose of making multiplayer work (they send each other the "movie files", as sending the entire gamestate would be too slow). I'm not really sure that such "game-specific" TASes would be accepted here, though, as they'd be rather awkward to verify possible.
Even if the site did accept game-specific movie files, there's the question of how to use that format to make a decent TAS. I don't have massive amounts of experience with RTS games, but I don't remember any of them having savestates or rerecording, much less memory watch or lua scripting.
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adelikat wrote:
The idea was to kill off my family to avoid lost time to them getting sick and other inconvenient things.
I'm not really sure that such "game-specific" TASes would be accepted here
Their major problem is that more often than not such files are of the form "this object is at this place at this time" rather than "this button is pressed at this time". The problem is that there's no way of knowing if there's cheating involved (in other words, the file format has not been edited to perform things that are impossible normally via keyboard/mouse only, such as the character moving too fast).
Most RTSes (and many TBSes, for that matter) have an internal massively sync-stable recording format for the purpose of making multiplayer work (they send each other the "movie files", as sending the entire gamestate would be too slow). I'm not really sure that such "game-specific" TASes would be accepted here, though, as they'd be rather awkward to verify possible.
Even if this were possible, you'd still have to create the TAS tools, slow down, frame advance, savestates, etc, in addition to the fancy things, like lua and memory watch. Everyone who isn't nitsuja probably isn't capable of creating a bunch of tools to TAS a single game.
Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.
Well most RTSs let you save whenever and if you set them to the slowest speed they crawl so slowly it might as well be frame advance.
lua isn't implemented in any of the 3D emulators (unless PSX has it and I don't know about it), but there are still high quality TASes on the emulators.
starcraft for N64, there's already a big thread on this.
"Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence."
