nymx: I love seeing these types of submissions, where the battle for cuts continue.
First, I want to address the use of the FCEUX emulator. I have to be completely honest, I've only used it once before. I wasn't sure if it was as accurate as BizHawk; however, I do know that the speed of its operation is amazingly fast though. This can be very helpful for automation or quick confirmation syncs. Bigbass's confirmation on this settles it for me though. Thank you so much for doing that!
Second, this run is excellent. I applaud you for finding frames in a "push and pull" lag situation. I personally have had a lot of experience with this kind of situation and I know it to be very difficult to manage. Will the history of cuts continue? :P
I'm accepting this amazing TAS to "Standard" for publication!
First of all, congratulations on yet another improvement to an already super tight game.
A few concerns I'd like to raise:
* Didn't Pankaj contribute to the boss strategy? [https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638212840920688175] or had you discovered these improvements independently? If the first, I think they deserve co authorship.
* I take issue with the choice of emulator. Fceux is known for being less faithful. But even worse, you are still using a very old version of it. Insisting with this choice in 2023 seems lazy, at best. This discourages potential challengers to improve the movie in the future.
I would strongly request a resync to a more accurate emu (Bizhawk 2.9.1). I know this is possible and can be done without much effort.
* Please do make an encode when you submit a movie and write a more informative sub notes. What you wrote is fine but doesn't go much in depth as to why you got better kills. Again, the more info you can provide, the better for potential challengers
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2823
Location: Northern California
eien86 wrote:
* I take issue with the choice of emulator. Fceux is known for being less faithful. But even worse, you are still using a very old version of it. Insisting with this choice in 2023 seems lazy, at best.
FCEUX is still completely acceptable on TASVideos, and we are not considering deprecating it. Emulator choice is not at all an issue of "laziness", it is simply a matter of preference.
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 BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Also worth noting that BizHawk is 64-bit only while FCEUX is still 32-bit computer compatible. While it's mostly common to have one nowadays, not everyone has a 64-bit computer and thus can't use BizHawk.
First of all, congratulations on yet another improvement to an already super tight game.
A few concerns I'd like to raise:
* Didn't Pankaj contribute to the boss strategy? [https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638212840920688175] or had you discovered these improvements independently? If the first, I think they deserve co authorship.
* I take issue with the choice of emulator. Fceux is known for being less faithful. But even worse, you are still using a very old version of it. Insisting with this choice in 2023 seems lazy, at best. This discourages potential challengers to improve the movie in the future.
I would strongly request a resync to a more accurate emu (Bizhawk 2.9.1). I know this is possible and can be done without much effort.
* Please do make an encode when you submit a movie and write a more informative sub notes. What you wrote is fine but doesn't go much in depth as to why you got better kills. Again, the more info you can provide, the better for potential challengers
Pankaj has made 4 frame improvements to the current publication, and the current submission is a new improvement starting from 4-3. The strategies of the two movies are completely different.
I think I have become accustomed to FCEUX, unless the website prohibits submission of FCEUX from now on. If so, I will use Bizhawk
I think I have written a lot of information in the previous submission text. If you want to learn more, please refer to the previous submission instructions
Fceux is known for being less faithful. But even worse, you are still using a very old version of it.
The "less faithful" part is true in general, but I think most (if not all) FCEUX 2.2.3 movies sync on newer versions too, and on the Qt frontend as well. If only that didn't stop working for me... which is one of the reasons why I prefer BizHawk too.
eien86 wrote:
I would strongly request a resync to a more accurate emu (Bizhawk 2.9.1). I know this is possible and can be done without much effort.
FCEUX is still completely acceptable on TASVideos, and we are not considering deprecating it.
It would probably take a lot for FCEUX to get into the "accepted but not preferred" section, right? asking for a friend +- -+Darkman425 wrote:
While it's mostly common to have one nowadays, not everyone has a 64-bit computer and thus can't use BizHawk.
Do that many people have 32-bit only PCs, though? It's probably on the decline too, especially since Macrohard is killing the ecosystem by turning 60% of the current Windows 10 PCs unupgradable, I mean they're doing Vista 2, I mean Windows 11 released.
Joined: 10/20/2022
Posts: 61
Location: Rajasthan, India
Wow that's totally surprising to me that you achieved a sub 9:12, congratulations.
why there is no encode ? Sadly I don't FCEUX readily installed to watch the movie.
4-3 was already lag-free in your previous TAS so I have no idea what improvement was done there,
Changing the lag frame placement changes the Boss behaviour and results in good luck ? that's something interesting.
Joined: 10/20/2022
Posts: 61
Location: Rajasthan, India
BlackWinnerYoshi wrote:
The "less faithful" part is true in general, but I think most (if not all) FCEUX 2.2.3 movies sync on newer versions too, and on the Qt frontend as well. If only that didn't stop working for me...
Its true that it syncs in newer versions of FCEUX but I noticed that if you create a new input file in newer versions of FCEUX and copy paste all of the inputs in that file then it no longer syncs, it gets same amount of extra lag just as BizHawk gives (more lag starts from 20500 frame roughly)
So maybe FCEUX changes accuracy according to what version of FCEUX the input file uses and that could be the only why it syncs on newer versions maybe ? But yeah its indeed true that you loose time when resync it in BizHawk, The best I could achieve in BizHawk is now 9:12.57 (it doesn't include newer improvements DreamYao found ).
Wow that's totally surprising to me that you achieved a sub 9:12, congratulations.
why there is no encode ? Sadly I don't FCEUX readily installed to watch the movie.
4-3 was already lag-free in your previous TAS so I have no idea what improvement was done there,
Changing the lag frame placement changes the Boss behaviour and results in good luck ? that's something interesting.
Generating different Lags at the same speed will change the randomness of the boss, which allows the second boss of 4-4 to obtain a 4-frame rule and also changes the randomness of the 5-2 boss, allowing the 5-2 boss to launch an attack on Batman earlier
Always glad to see improvements to this beautiful game, well done!
Regarding emulator choice, as far as I'm concerned, as long as the movie verifies on real hardware, that's all that should matter when "faithfulness" is a concern. Based on this newly recorded verification, I can confirm that this submission works on real hardware.
Link to video
It is entirely possible that there could be more or less so-called "lag" frames on console compared to any given emulator. Given the right hardware, I believe it would be possible to measure the potential difference (via composite VSYNC to track real frames). But how that translates to real time may differ wildly between different NES consoles. So there could be an argument that the total framecount of a movie may not be 100% accurate.
That said, I have successfully verified over 90 movies made with FCEUX, from varying versions and time periods. Even as far back as 2007, which used FCEU v0.98.16. The reason that many movies made with old versions of FCEUX still sync on newer versions, is because the emulator's behavior in regards to accuracy doesn't typically change much between versions, and even when it does, the changes don't necessarily affect all games.
eien86 wrote:
But even worse, you are still using a very old version of it. Insisting with this choice in 2023 seems lazy, at best. This discourages potential challengers to improve the movie in the future.
I don't see how this discourages collaboration/improvements. FCEUX is a very usable emulator and for many games is plenty accurate for TAS development. If anything, telling someone they must use a specific emulator despite the existence of accepted alternatives, is much more discouraging.
eien86 wrote:
I would strongly request a resync to a more accurate emu (Bizhawk 2.9.1). I know this is possible and can be done without much effort.
The difficulty of resyncing a movie between emulators (or versions of the same emu) can potentially require a lot of effort. Depends on multiple factors including emulation differences between the two emus, and how much the game in question depends on said differences. It could be as simple as adding/removing an empty frame here or there. Or it could require reworking entire chunks of the TAS.
Well, ig Bigbass has already made an encode with that console verification, but maybe I'll make my own from the emulator
EDIT: I've made a 4K60 encode, but I set it to go public on Thu, 15 Jun 2023 20:15 +0200 -- since Bigbass already showed the console verification, and also I kinda stopped caring about this encoding stuff because I'm watching my submission being processed, and oops I got a cold too, oh well
Link to videoPankaj wrote:
Its true that it syncs in newer versions of FCEUX but I noticed that if you create a new input file in newer versions of FCEUX and copy paste all of the inputs in that file then it no longer syncs, it gets same amount of extra lag just as BizHawk gives (more lag starts from 20500 frame roughly)
So maybe FCEUX changes accuracy according to what version of FCEUX the input file uses and that could be the only why it syncs on newer versions maybe ? But yeah its indeed true that you loose time when resync it in BizHawk, The best I could achieve in BizHawk is now 9:12.57 (it doesn't include newer improvements DreamYao found ).
Oh wait, I forgot about the old/new PPU thing that is buggy a thing since 2.1.2 - before the Qt interface was made. I guess that defaults to the new PPU? Or some other version? 2.2.2 definitely mentioned something about improvements from BizHawk...
Bigbass wrote:
Based on this newly recorded verification, I can confirm that this submission works on real hardware.
So I guess you don't need to change anything in the input? I think we can go home then.
This movie has been published.
The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie.
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[5350] NES Batman by DreamYao in 09:11.89
