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Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
Hello, I know I'm new and it's my first test of a TAS but I began to try CoM yesterday. I made a video of Traverse Town (but it's optimisable ^^'). Can I put it on youTube to show you or must I put it on an another site ? You will be able to say me if I have make some errors (because I'm sure I've made some :p). To continue this TAS, I'll need to understand the RNG so if someone has ideas... I saw that attacking (and jumping ?) can change the place where Axel will appear but I don't know if this place is randomly generated. And if someone wants to help me (or wants that I help him), don't hesitate to ask ;). I'm sorry if there are mistakes in my English but I'm learning this language.
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Warepire
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Posting WIPs on youtube is perfectly fine, but you should also consider posting your movie file, which you can do by logging in to the main site and upload it to the WIP storage. To access the WIP storage: On the main page, click Login at the top, log in with your forum name and password. After that, open this link: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/ Then click the link "Your movies" which is located above the "Users with movies:" column.
Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
I haven't touched this game in years so I'll take a look. It has been said that TWEWY's battle engine is recycled from this so hopefully what I learned from reverse--engineering TWEWY can speed things up. On the off-chance that the RNG is exactly the same, I'll put a lua script together for you. Who knows, maybe this game holds a key to something I need in TWEWY.
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Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
Thanks for your answers ! Here is the video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfFKqXEsClc and the movie file is put on the site. Zanoab, we can try to see if it's the same RNG (I have never played TWEWY) and maybe, we will help each other. Edit : I made some tests and I saw that the RNG changes : - each frame for room synthesis and map cards from the ennemies - for the barrels, boxes... in the ground, that changes each x frames (I must find the x yet) But make a jump can change the RNG, too.
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Warepire
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Here's a quick link to the WIP in the userfiles storage for the lazy: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/8579953024509330
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
I've remake Traverse Town and I've earned 2212 frames with a little of luck manipulation. The WIP : http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/8624261096807876 Thanks to adding the url link Warepire. For the RNG, it changes each frame and if jump or attack, it changes too. Maybe, it's the same thing in TWEWY, Zanoab
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N._Harmonik
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Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 502
Location: Canada
YouTube please.
Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
I will put it on YouTube when the second world will be done.
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Post subject: kingdom hearts wip1: YouTube
Joined: 3/18/2006
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Link to video
Tounet01 wrote:
I've remake Traverse Town and I've earned 2212 frames with a little of luck manipulation. The WIP : http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/8624261096807876
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
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Location: Belgium
Thanks antd !
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Location: Malmö, Sweden
I like what I saw. Keep it up, looking forward to more.
Even the best player is limited by the speed of his fingers, or his mind's ability to control them. But what happens when speed is not a factor, when theory becomes reality?
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
Thanks a lot Dragonsfangs ! Here is the video with Traverse Town and Halloween Town : Link to video And here is the movie file : http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/8702906695349889 For the next world, I hesitate between Wonderland and Monstro. Please, give me your ideas and opinions.
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Samsara
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Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
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Link to video I remembered I had done a very quick test run up through a bit of Traverse Town a couple years back and remembered I had found a couple timesavers for the tutorial fight, so I optimized what I had done and whipped up a video really quick. Hopefully it'll be of use for an improvement/optimized version of your run? Key points in comparison to your run: *The first cutscene after entering Traverse Town can be faded out a frame earlier. *Donald's card can be collected at least 3 frames earlier. *While Donald's casting his magic, I set Sora up in a better position for the movement section. Rolling left and jumping back to the right fulfills the requirements for the tutorial and lets me attack immediately. *Since I'm not in the middle of a roll when the tutorial begins, I can attack sooner. The final hit of the first three hit combo is delayed, since the full three hit combo has that pause at the end that loses quite a few frames whenever it's used. 61 frames are saved. *In the next section, when running the cards out, using two-hit combos is the fastest method, saving 121 frames in this case. Single hits would have been about a half second slower. *Autofiring L and R during the card-shifting section, for some reason, ends the section 22 frames faster. Total: 204 frames faster (3.4 seconds)
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Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
Well, I've just one thing to say : a big thank you ! But now, I must do again Traverse Town and Halloween Town ('cause of Luck)... But a very, very big thank you ! Does someone have another tricks for Traverse Town, Halloween Town or the game in general ? (I want to know it as soon as possible because I won't remake everything for 2 seconds when I finish the wolrds first)
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N._Harmonik
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Joined: 8/27/2006
Posts: 502
Location: Canada
Are you going to do Riku's story too?
Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
Well, I don't know yet. I've never finished the Riku's story in the GBA version because I've never found the good card to continue so I don't know how Ansem fights. But maybe I'll try when the part is over Sora. Edit : Here you are the version with a better tutorial (thanks to Samsara) and a global improvement of about 3500 frames (about 59 seconds) and a better luck manipulation. The movie file is here and the video : Link to video Please, say me what you think about it ;)
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Spikestuff
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Why are you using the gba bios? You don't need to have it to tas.
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Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
Yes, that's right but I have a better RNG when I use that (for the number of frames). It's just for that.
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Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
I started trying to dissect the memory structure during battles and it is indeed similar to TWEWY. Unfortunately, I'm trying my best to figure out which pointers are which (it is definitely more compressed and less obvious.) Once I get this structure straightened out (literally), I'll make a lua script and further analyze the contents of each block. I would also like to note that every card (yours and enemies') may also dynamically allocated. EDIT: After modifying my old lua script for desmume to dump the cpu registers on memory read/write, I have verified the structure of the stack and it easily fits the stack structure from TWEWY. It is late here so I'll finish the crucial parts of the research later and release a lua script.
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
Sorry for the delay, I was on vacantions without my computer and I couldn't connect me. Thanks a lot for your help, Zanoab ! And good luck in your researches.
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Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
Right now the development of my script has hit a road bump. The heap system here compared to TWEWY's is a lot more... primitive. I am finding myself using save states a lot more during this research. Differences from TWEWY's heap system:
  • Block headers are nulled on deallocation (have not yet seen how this affects the linked list arrangement)
  • Contains pointer to a general name (CPU_HEAP or something close) Probably can be used as a signature for scanning for all blocks in memory with help from the previous bullet.
  • Not yet able to identify block sizes
  • Not yet able to identify which block contains which data in any way
  • Each enemy has a different struct and size?
  • Contains pointers to various locations (unable to identify any meaningful data yet)
If anybody is interested, here is the information I have on the block headers:
0x00	2 bytes		0xFFFF	(0x0000 if unoccupied)
0x02	2 bytes		Object State (unoccupied, etc?)
0x04	4 bytes		null?
0x08	4 bytes		null?
0x0C	Ptr			Previous Object
0x10	Ptr			Next Object
0x14	4 bytes		null?
0x18	4 bytes		0x081213DC	(Pointer to name)
0x1C	Ptr			Object's Ptr (0x0)
Both current hp and max hp are 2 bytes with max hp right after current hp. I don't have time right now to do any further research.
Active player (257)
Joined: 8/12/2013
Posts: 185
Location: Belgium
You make a really good job ! Are you going to do a TAS of TWEWY ?
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Joined: 1/26/2009
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Location: Canada - Québec
I tried to mess around with the no$gba debugger and his breakpoint feature(I know it's already possible to "break" over memory access with lua, but I doubt you can see all assembler operations, the stacks, etc...). And yep, I got some data for those enemy block. If that may help, here's a script that show some enemy info when the crossair appear(or when the enemy hp-bar appear at the top-right). I didn't figured yet how to directly get all enemy pointer for any battle.
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BadPotato wrote:
I tried to mess around with the no$gba debugger and his breakpoint feature(I know it's already possible to "break" over memory access with lua, but I doubt you can see all assembler operations, the stacks, etc...). And yep, I got some data for those enemy block.
Please help me to fill the list of emulators with proper debuggers! http://tasvideos.org/ReverseEngineering.html
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
N._Harmonik
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Posts: 502
Location: Canada
Why, oh, why do I even <i>try</i> to understand my own species?
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