Tractopelle
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Joined: 12/5/2014
Posts: 6
Location: Reims, France
Oi people! I'm trying to get SBD to run on Hourglass-r81 on win8.1 (Yes, I'm a stubborn french) So far, I managed to get the game to start once, but lags every half second or so, so I stopped the game to try and fiddle about with the options to get a smoother experience to try to do something nice with it. But since then, the game won't start. It shows up in the task manager, takes up to 175MB of RAM and then goes back to 0% of activity. It still starts when ran out of hourglass. The game is the Humble Bundle stand-alone version, running on winXP compatibility, so is hourglass, I couldn't afford to make it run on a VM because my computer isn't powerful enough: CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 960T GPU: AMD Radeon HD5850 1GB GDDR5 RAM: 8GB DDR3 2000MHz Any clues what could've caused the game to just completely stop starting in hourglass? I'll keep fiddling around to see if I can make it start again, but for now, I've got absolutely no clue of why it won't start again. Config used: http://pastebin.com/26itk1F7 (Pretty much default, only multithreading activated) EDIT: Here's a youtube video to show all the settings (pretty much default) and what it does. Link to video UPDATE: Multithreading makes it run, but painfully slow. UPDATE2: Inputs won't get sent. Game works fine (Still slow) in hourglass with a XBone controller, but won't take keyboard input. That's another problem. UPDATE3: Making the game run at 30fps makes it somewhat smoother at times, but is still slow. UPDATE4: Might just be my computer that's too bad to make the game run properly under hourglass. UPDATE5: Changing task priority of either hourglass/SBD or both at the same time has no impact whatsoever. UPDATE6: This is what it looks like. Link to video
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045
Is it multithreaded? Oh, looks like you already got your answer.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Tractopelle
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Joined: 12/5/2014
Posts: 6
Location: Reims, France
I'll update everything I can find in the main post, I'm on the hourglass irc channel on freenode, add me on skype if you want to reach directly, I'm gonna try everything possible to make this game run but any help would be much appreciated.
keylie
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Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2845)
Joined: 3/17/2013
Posts: 392
Well, having the game running very slowly is not very harmful for me. You should try to see if it syncs at least. Keyboard input not working is a bad thing. There is a lot of games that seems to have this functionality lacking. I tried once to investigate Super Meat Boy which also lacks keyboard support, but I couldn't find how the game fetches the keyboard status. For now, hourglass supports input events (WM_KEYUP and WM_KEYDOWN), input API functions (GetKeyState, GetAsyncKeyState, GetKeyboardState) and Direct Input functions (lpKeyboard->GetDeviceState) If the xbox360 controller works, you could use it to record your TAS. Controllers are supported in the hourglass-resurrection project, but there is no release of it yet afaik.
Tractopelle
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Joined: 12/5/2014
Posts: 6
Location: Reims, France
keylie wrote:
Well, having the game running very slowly is not very harmful for me. You should try to see if it syncs at least. Keyboard input not working is a bad thing. There is a lot of games that seems to have this functionality lacking. I tried once to investigate Super Meat Boy which also lacks keyboard support, but I couldn't find how the game fetches the keyboard status. For now, hourglass supports input events (WM_KEYUP and WM_KEYDOWN), input API functions (GetKeyState, GetAsyncKeyState, GetKeyboardState) and Direct Input functions (lpKeyboard->GetDeviceState) If the xbox360 controller works, you could use it to record your TAS. Controllers are supported in the hourglass-resurrection project, but there is no release of it yet afaik.
The game running slowly is more of an advantage than a discomfort, to be honest. It's easier to figure stuff out at such a slow speed, it's just that I need to get comfortable with it, since it's how I'm gonna have to do it if keyboard inputs won't get recognized. I can slow down the game, but I can't fast-forward it, guess I'll just have to roll with it for now. Thanks for the answer Kilaye <3
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045
So does this mean Stealth Bastard Deluxe TAS is happening? :O
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
ALAKTORN
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Former player
Joined: 10/19/2009
Posts: 2527
Location: Italy
Patashu wrote:
So does this mean Stealth Bastard Deluxe TAS is happening? :O
Calling it a TAS is a bit of a stretch if he’s only playing in slower fps… lol.
Patashu
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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4045
It hasn't been established if savestates work or not yet
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Tractopelle
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Joined: 12/5/2014
Posts: 6
Location: Reims, France
I tried absolutely every combination of settings possible in the past two days, nothing makes it smoother, so I'm just gonna conclude that my comp is too slow to make it run properly. Also, savestates crash the game on my comp', so I guess savestates won't work. I can give the stand-alone Humble Bundle version of the game for testing purposes if needed, just pm me. Here's the config I use (pretty much default, there's little to no difference with other settings, and some make the game unable to start.): http://pastebin.com/26itk1F7
Warepire
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Editor
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
Unfortunately games in multi-thread mode may crash when saving and/or loading sates, it's not well handled. I have a couple of ideas for that, but I haven't had time to touch the code since August. Since I am the only "active" developer of Hourglass-Resurrection, I'm afraid the program is at a standstill right now. :(
Player (146)
Joined: 7/16/2009
Posts: 686
Tractopelle wrote:
Also, savestates crash the game on my comp', so I guess savestates won't work.
You really should use a VM running XP to test this, any other OS is almost guaranteed to screw up savestates. That might be slow, but things being slow should never be a problem for TASing (if it is, you're probably doing it wrong).
Tractopelle
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Joined: 12/5/2014
Posts: 6
Location: Reims, France
Scepheo wrote:
Tractopelle wrote:
Also, savestates crash the game on my comp', so I guess savestates won't work.
You really should use a VM running XP to test this, any other OS is almost guaranteed to screw up savestates. That might be slow, but things being slow should never be a problem for TASing (if it is, you're probably doing it wrong).
The thing is that I don't use a 360 controller, I use a XBone controller, which there are no drivers for on XP, so my controller might not work. What software do you recommend? VMWare?
Warepire wrote:
Unfortunately games in multi-thread mode may crash when saving and/or loading sates, it's not well handled. I have a couple of ideas for that, but I haven't had time to touch the code since August. Since I am the only "active" developer of Hourglass-Resurrection, I'm afraid the program is at a standstill right now. :(
I can't code for shit, but if you need help with anything else, I'd be glad to help, just ask me.
Joined: 12/31/2009
Posts: 174
If you are using Windows 7, you can download and install XP Mode from Microsoft.
Player (146)
Joined: 7/16/2009
Posts: 686
Zanoab wrote:
If you are using Windows 7, you can download and install XP Mode from Microsoft.
His original post states he's using Windows 8.1.
Tractopelle wrote:
The thing is that I don't use a 360 controller, I use a XBone controller, which there are no drivers for on XP, so my controller might not work. What software do you recommend? VMWare?
As for software, VMWare should work fine, I personally prefer Oracle VM VirtualBox. If your controller doesn't work, then that's a shame, but I don't see why you couldn't just work with either the keyboard or joy2key. EDIT: For clarity; I'm getting the impression that your idea of TASing is just playing the game normally, but with savestates. While this is technically a TAS, and it's fine you want that, it's not something that you should be making for TASVideos. If you want to submit, you should be playing frame-by-frame (hence slowdown should not be an issue) and your input should be absolutely frame-perfect (hence no need for a controller).
Tractopelle
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Joined: 12/5/2014
Posts: 6
Location: Reims, France
Scepheo wrote:
Zanoab wrote:
If you are using Windows 7, you can download and install XP Mode from Microsoft.
His original post states he's using Windows 8.1.
Tractopelle wrote:
The thing is that I don't use a 360 controller, I use a XBone controller, which there are no drivers for on XP, so my controller might not work. What software do you recommend? VMWare?
As for software, VMWare should work fine, I personally prefer Oracle VM VirtualBox. If your controller doesn't work, then that's a shame, but I don't see why you couldn't just work with either the keyboard or joy2key. EDIT: For clarity; I'm getting the impression that your idea of TASing is just playing the game normally, but with savestates. While this is technically a TAS, and it's fine you want that, it's not something that you should be making for TASVideos. If you want to submit, you should be playing frame-by-frame (hence slowdown should not be an issue) and your input should be absolutely frame-perfect (hence no need for a controller).
I know what a TAS is, don't worry, it's just that if input doesn't work, I'll have to find a way to make it work, so playing the game very slowly with precise controller input might be the only way to do it. EDIT: Got Oracle VM running, but game won't start on it, just crashes instantly, DirectX and Visual c++ 2008 and 2010 installed, gonna try to find it out why. might just be that there's not enough VRAM allowed, since it caps at 128MB but the game requires 256 or more. EDIT2: Nevermind, did a little digging and Oracle VM pumps all the 3D stuff onto the host's GPU, so I have no clue of why it's not running. Will keep digging.