Posted: 4/24/2014 2:25 PM
Post subject: So... why does FBA-rr desync so much after all?
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Sonia
She/Her
Joined: 12/6/2013
Posts: 435
Location: Brazil
Something I don't understand is how some games can sync perfectly while others are completely hopeless. I mean, they all belong to the same emulator, right? What's the difference between unreliable and reliable games, and what exactly makes the unreliable ones desync? Is there a way to tell if the game will sync or not before making the TAS? That would help me a lot since I'd not do the TAS in vain, so I'd not waste my time.
Posted: 4/24/2014 2:28 PM
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Ilari
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1113)
Joined: 5/1/2010
Posts: 1217
Rookie of 2010 New systems TASer of 2010 New systems TAS of 2010
Basically, not saving/loading all the game state into savestate. Some games may not use the stuff that doesn't get saved/loaded (and thus seems stable), but some do (and desync, perhaps a lot).
Posted: 4/24/2014 2:44 PM
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Sonia
She/Her
Joined: 12/6/2013
Posts: 435
Location: Brazil
I see. It'd still help me a bunch if I knew what games were tas safe and tas unsafe prior to making the TAS, though. It'd be cool if there was a list somewhat like this: https://dolphin-emu.org/compat/S/ Except listing what games are tas safe or unsafe. Even though it'd be really helpful, I think nobody in the world would be willing to do this. Maybe there's a way to tell if the game will sync by looking into the ROM's codes or something? If the only to know if it will sync is by testing it, then it'd be extremely tiresome.
Posted: 4/25/2014 12:45 AM
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Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4043
synnchan wrote:
Maybe there's a way to tell if the game will sync by looking into the ROM's codes or something? If the only to know if it will sync is by testing it, then it'd be extremely tiresome.
If FBA is like Mame, the problem is that every game has a different driver (program that actually knows how to play that kind of ROM) and thus a different savestate implementation, so you can't look at the ROM, you have to look at the driver, which isn't very amenable to automatic analysis.
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Posted: 4/25/2014 2:27 AM
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Sonia
She/Her
Joined: 12/6/2013
Posts: 435
Location: Brazil
Then what needs to be done is improving the save state function of each driver supported by FBA-rr, instead of improving game by game. What I find to be very strange is that for example... Makaimura synced perfectly for me, while Daimakaimura always desyncs on every attempt, but both of them comes from the same driver: cps1.
Posted: 4/25/2014 2:29 AM
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Ilari
Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1113)
Joined: 5/1/2010
Posts: 1217
Rookie of 2010 New systems TASer of 2010 New systems TAS of 2010
synnchan wrote:
What I find to be very strange is that for example... Makaimura synced perfectly for me, while Daimakaimura always desyncs on every attempt, but both of them comes from the same driver: cps1.
Presumably Makaimura does not use some feature of cps1 that involves state that isn't saved/restored properly while Daimakaimura does.
Posted: 4/26/2014 1:55 AM
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Sonia
She/Her
Joined: 12/6/2013
Posts: 435
Location: Brazil
I only know one thing. If someday MAME-rr gets as stable as something like FCEUX, then goodbye life. I'd spend my whole life TASing on it, lol. xD