Posted: 1/23/2017 9:48 PM
Post subject: New to ... well a lot
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Sieluvaras
He/Him
Joined: 1/23/2017
Posts: 4
hi folks :) since i didn't find a "new member" threat, i'll put it here. i've been watching the TAS block on AGDQ for the last few years (or at least the vids of it). and i'm still lacking words for this piece of art. anyway, i've decided to "play" with this stuff myself. i'm a software developer (boring business shit like ERP, CRM, Logistics and so on) and so i'm familiar with some things. let me give you a quick summary of my skills. - .NET - PHP - HTML - Javascript - MSSQL - MySQL i know that most of this won't help in this case... :'D so i need you guys to tell me what _will_ help me. you don't have to tell me how to walk.... just in which direction ;) i decided to focus on "super mario world" for multiple reasons. it seems to be kinda "indestructible"(AGDQ 2016, WTF?!) plus there's some uhm.. "personal thing from my childhood" *coughs* ;) starting with an emulator is kinda obvious. i guess i'll take a closer look at bizhawk. bought an xbox controller for my pc today. this should be enough for some first steps, right? so my next steps are: - play the game (again) - play the game with speed run strats? - TAS it? - find glitches?? / use known glitches?? - ??? - profit the final goal is to break it... for real... total control what i've read (and heard) so far, LUA is definitely on the "to do list" :) some basic understanding of assembler maybe? (since i guess it's written in assembler) what else? gimme something to work with. thanks! p.s. sorry for "bad" english. my german is way better xD EDIT: i thought of this more like a "who i am" but i guess it's still a newbie question and this is the right place. thanks @mod :)
Posted: 1/23/2017 9:59 PM
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Invariel
He/Him
Editor, Site Developer, Player (171)
Joined: 8/11/2011
Posts: 539
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Arcade TAS of 2023
Hi, Sieluvaras, and welcome to TASVideos. You've got a great attitude heading into a really fun hobby. Believe it or not, those skills you listed will help you a lot more than you think. While a lot of TASing is about understanding the game you are playing and figuring out how to make the most of that understanding, a lot of getting that understanding revolves around thinking about how the programmers thought. For example, in .NET and other object-oriented languages, you think about structures and objects in memory - contiguous blocks of data. When you're searching RAM for enemy data, you will be applying those principles - searching for contiguous blocks of data that you can parse into enemy information. Or grouping X and Y positioning near each other. Or HP and MP. That sort of thing. As for starting out, if you're going to be looking at Super Mario World specifically, you will definitely want to look at the input files for the currently published videos, and all of the previous publications; you will also want to check out the Game Resources page for that title (http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/SNES/SuperMarioWorld.html), which is extensive, and which will help you get a baseline of information for playing that particular title. The most important pieces of advice I can offer you are to ask researched questions in the Super Mario World thread in the SNES forum, and post your progress in Userfiles so that people can comment on it. Best of luck, and, again, welcome to TASVideos.
I am still the wizard that did it. "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata <scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Posted: 1/23/2017 10:12 PM
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moozooh
Senior Moderator
Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5777
Location: Away
Familiarizing yourself in increments is quite sensible. Begin with slowdown and savestates and learn to adopt the mindset of efficiency—not wasting movement, only doing things that serve your primary goal. Consider doing a few simple speedruns for fun just to get used to the mindset, unless that's already how you've played some games before. Move on to frame advance and memory watch. At this point you should stop eyeballing things and instead rely mainly on the value readout. Find or look up everything that you might need, try executing complex tricks/glitches, and figure out how to use them optimally. Then move on to TAStudio and Lua scripting—they help you automate, make more sense of things, and spend less time on the more boring/mundane parts. This isn't strictly necessary, but if you want to compete with the more optimized runs out there or just do something very complex in general, it would be hard to avoid. Learning Lua might be in order, unless there are already good scripts available for your intents. When you're confident with that and want to break games apart completely, move on to tracing and disassembly. Low-level knowledge, such as the basics of assembly language of whatever the emulated system you'll be working with, will certainly be necessary here, unlike any prior step. Note that this step is only really required if you want to dabble in ACE or find obscure game-breaking glitches for real. In no way this is a prerequisite for quality TASes in general, and only a few dozen runs on the site go in that territory. SMW in particular is very well documented, and you can use the extensive knowledge accumulated by the authors of its runs. However, it does occur to me that this game in particular has already been broken every which way, so keep that in mind.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Posted: 1/23/2017 10:14 PM
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Sieluvaras
He/Him
Joined: 1/23/2017
Posts: 4
thanks @Invariel i guess you're the one who moved this thread. i'm aware of the (e.g. analytic) skills i've developed due to my job. but tbh i know nothing about that "crazy memory stuff" some of you guys do. i'm more like "oh.. that's hex... right?!" xD but yeah, at least i live in the same world as the devs do/did. so "common dev sense" should get me far :D i'll definitely look into this resources! (thanks again, mate). maybe this was the direction i needed :) oh, did i say thank you? ;)
Posted: 1/23/2017 10:32 PM
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Sieluvaras
He/Him
Joined: 1/23/2017
Posts: 4
@moozooh i guess i'm familiar with basic speed running strats in general. although it's not in jump and run games. it's more like mmo's. playing games uhm.. "efficent"? not wasting much time. the basic mindset of speedruns (i guess). in this case it was getting a char to max level as fast as possible. but anyway :D so my next steps are: - doing some (speed)runs - and "Move on to frame advance and memory watch" i know that LUA is mainly used to simplify things like movement patterns or the search for specific variable values / conditions ... whatever. i don't know (yet) :) seems like the next weekend is 20+ hours of playing super mario world xD thanks to you as well :)
Posted: 1/23/2017 11:40 PM
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Samsara
She/They
Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2238)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Homebrew TAS of 2023 Exotic platforms TAS of 2020 Sega TAS of 2016
I usually recommend against SMW as a TASer's first project, but now I think it might actually be one of the better games to start with. The game has tons of trick/glitch documentation and a fairly large, active TASing community that can help you with whatever you need. Get in touch with Amaraticando or BrunoVisnadi, take a look through the (massive) thread for the game, and definitely look through the huge amounts of SMW documentation we have on the site. Best of luck!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family. Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Posted: 1/23/2017 11:50 PM
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Sieluvaras
He/Him
Joined: 1/23/2017
Posts: 4
Thanks @Samsara I'll definitely look into that too. (oh my... this list ist growing quickly xD ) Since SMW is the most (afaik) popular game on the SNES, i was kinda hoping it's pretty good documented :D
Posted: 1/24/2017 12:06 AM
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Amaraticando
It/Its
Editor, Player (159)
Joined: 1/10/2012
Posts: 673
Location: Brazil
TAS of 2015 SNES TAS of 2015
I shall provide a good list of resources for learning the many subjects related to TASing SMW. Many of them are useful for other games as well. TASVideos You are here! Explore our tons of movies 😍 SMW Resources: http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/SNES/SuperMarioWorld.html (Lua scripts listed at the end) SMW Forum: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1571 DiscordApp DiscordApp is a very nice chatting program (mostly) for gamers. You can access the so called servers with the official client or via your browser. Some servers: SMW Science: https://discord.gg/MgfCNhh * SMW Speedrun: https://discord.gg/YfcJR6p * SMW Brasil: https://discord.gg/8rdnPCy * (portuguese only) * invitation link might expire SMWCentral SMW Central aims to be the Super Mario World hacking site, hosting everything you will ever need in order to create your own hack. While it focuses on creating ROM hacks, it has an arsenal of good tools, docs, RAM Map, etc. Check the menu. Some useful links: RAM Map: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=nmap&m=smwram THE glitch list: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=viewthread&t=72499 SMWiki: http://www.smwiki.net/wiki/Main_Page Disassembly of the game: https://www.smwcentral.net/?p=section&a=details&id=13732 General SNES stuff ROMHacking docs: http://www.romhacking.net/documents/ Super Nintendo Development Wiki: https://wiki.superfamicom.org/snes/show/HomePage (advanced)
Posted: 1/24/2017 12:21 AM
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BrunoVisnadi
Editor, Skilled player (1344)
Joined: 12/28/2013
Posts: 396
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
SNES TAS of 2020 TAS of 2015 SNES TAS of 2015
Hello, Sieluvaras! I always like seeing people interested in TASing SMW :) So, the best way to learn is to TAS some hacks. There are a lot of hacks TASed on Youtube, so you can start trying to beat some of the old TASes there. You could also try to participate in the SMW TAS challenge we are organizing: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=447085# Be sure to enter in Discord links in Amaraticando's post, so we can communicate better.
My YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVoUfT49xN9TU-gDMHv57sw Projects: SMW 96 exit. SDW any%, with Amaraticando. SMA2 SMW small only Kaizo Mario World 3