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Referencing the above:
4) If I convert to NESHawk and the resulting movie is longer, which run takes priority from a publication standpoint?
6) I don't mind converting and re-syncing if it's a worthwhile endeavor
7) This makes sense. I had my original BizHawk set up for NESHawk before upgrading to 64-bit windows. I just forgot to check this particular setting in this one instance after the fresh install. I've definitely corrected this oversight now.
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I had recently upgraded to a 64-bit version of windows and installed BizHawk 2.2.1. I didn't realize the installation defaulted to QuickNES core and ran the whole TAS in those settings.
If this is a reason the run can't be accepted, I guess I can try and convert it over to NESHawk Core.
2 Side Notes:
1) I was unaware that there was that drastic of a difference in accuracy. Why is QuickNES default if it's less accurate?
2) I've unfortunately had to downgrade my laptop back to 32-bit windows. If I do convert this run to NESHawk, it will be a different/older emulator version.
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If the changes between difficulty levels don't add any new content but only make the gameplay more difficult, just start with the hardest difficulty setting.
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Multiplication and division are equal in value and occur from left to right when separated by corresponding symbols, but the parenthesis directly associates with the 2 (without a symbol) thus separating the entire segment 2(2+1) as the divisor.
Edit:...which is why multiplying by reciprocal works for division when symbolically separated.
Edit 2:
So in this case, multiplying by the reciprocal would yield 6*.166666666666..... which equals 1.
EDIT 3:
Well crap. I'm mostly wrong. It is apparently no longer the convention to do the parenthesis association with the adjacent number. Though it USED TO BE the convention. Every math teacher I had through all my school used the old convention, not the new one.
I don't understand why the new convention is used; you'd never separate the expression 6÷2x to be 6÷2*x
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PEMDAS
Parenthesis then exponents, then multiplication, then division, addition, then subtraction.
The right calculator is the correct one.
EDIT: Further, the parenthesis is not separated from the 2 by a multiplication symbol thus the parenthetical portion is assumed to be directly associated with the 2 before the 2 is associated with the division symbol.
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Generally the TAS standard is to use the highest difficulty setting available. Unless there's reason for using a lesser difficulty (different game-content not seen at higher difficulties), it's frowned upon to use an easier setting simply to yield a marginally faster time.
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While tapes and disks do lead to long loading times and inflated TAS times, it's understood and isn't likely to impact the judgement of any submission. See this run for an accepted example with a long loading time.
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I have no suggestion for this problem, but.....IIRC, using multi-game carts is frowned upon unless it's not possible to find the game you're wanting to TAS by itself.
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It was not my intent to blow things out of proportion. I did not intend for any of these posts to be interpreted that I am upset with the current system. I'm not...unless the example I used (judges completely disregarding the community in preference of their own opinion) is actually happening. Forgive me if my choice of words did not convey this or came across too harshly.
ThunderAxe's post that I first referenced can be interpreted as though votes don't matter to judges unless they are explained with an accompanying forum post. I don't believe this is currently happening. I only want to re-enforce the idea that vote totals should matter to judges when determining tier. I recognize that they aren't the only factor considered.
I wasn't suggesting, nor am I now, that any of the site's current (or past) judges are guilty of this. I've been quite pleased with how things have been judged since I've been around. If there is a current judging problem, I'm unaware of it.
I'm not trying to start (or prolong) a debate here. Yet, I stand by my opinion that judges should not go against the general community opinion simply because they personally disagree with how entertaining a submission is. I'm not saying this is occurring, just that it's something I believe shouldn't be.
Side Note:
I found this statement hilarious, assuming you meant that millions of flies will still swarm around s**t even though it's s**t. Great reference!
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Point considered (along with some statements in IRC). Is the voting then worthwhile in the first place?
Maybe a new policy on determining community entertainment value would be to only use forum posts. We could eliminate the voting mechanism and simply put our yes/no vote in the forum for a given run. While this would unfortunately inflate the length of many topics, it would ideally lessen the abuse.
EDIT;
I guess the point I was trying to make in my earlier post is that a judge's personal opinion should never be able to override the collective opinion of the community (however that collective opinion is determined).
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If you're saying that submission votes aren't the only factor in whether a submission is accepted for publication or not, I agree with that.
However, if you're claiming that votes aren't the only factor on what tier a submission is accepted to, I respectfully disagree with your statement. In my opinion, a judge's personal opinion on whether a TAS is vault or moon quality should not override the community voting.
If the voting is borderline, I have no problem with the judge being the determining factor for the resulting tier. If the voting is clear on how entertaining others find a submitted run, yet the judge's opinion is opposite; the judge should not be allowed to override that voting and put the run in the tier of their own personal perspective.
This applies in both directions. A judge shouldn't be able to override a low entertainment vote to promote a run to moons, nor should they be able to override higher entertainment vote to relegate a run to vault.
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I've been playing around with getting CD games functioning in JPC-rr.
I've created a new FreeDOS boot image (HDD instead of floppy) that installs the CD-ROM driver.
Then I made a CD image of Warcraft (well the data portion at least--JPC doesn't support CD-DA discs).
I then assembled JPC with the following settings:
*The new FreeDOS boot image mounted in the hda slot
*A blank 256mb disk image mounted in hdb slot
*the warcraft data CD image mounted in the CD-ROM slot
*changed boot device to hda instead of fda
I was able to perform a full-install of the game from the CD to the blank drive and run it.
Further, I was able to then dump the drive with the installed game on it to a new disk image and then re-import that dump for a new mountable game image.
I can run the game from this new game image as well (even using the floppy FreeDOS boot image) as seen below:
Link to video
Sorry about the odd sound (it may be resulting from using a different boot disk than what I installed with).
For what it's worth, the console reports the "error message about "int 15h" not being supported" both with the installation program and starting the game itself; but all seemed to work fine thus far.
I don't yet know about games that need to access the CD drive for data during gameplay, but this is at least a good start.
I just wanted to show that the "15h error" may not be a death sentence for some games.
In my opinion, this may be a big step toward getting many other games to work with JPC-rr.
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MAJOR UPDATE (at least in my opinion it's major):
I've been playing around with getting CD games functioning in JPC-rr.
I've created a new FreeDOS boot image (HDD instead of floppy) that installs the CD-ROM driver.
Then I made a CD image of Warcraft (well the data portion at least--JPC doesn't support CD-DA discs).
I then assembled JPC with the following settings:
*The new FreeDOS boot image mounted in the hda slot
*A blank 256mb disk image mounted in hdb slot
*the warcraft data CD image mounted in the CD-ROM slot
*changed boot device to hda instead of fda
I was able to perform a full-install of the game from the CD to the blank drive and run it.
Further, I was able to then dump the drive with the installed game on it to a new disk image and then re-import that dump for a new mountable game image.
I can run the game from this new game image as well (even using the floppy FreeDOS boot image) as seen below: The mouse movement is weird on this because it uses the old floppy FreeDOS without the corrected ctmouse command.Link to video
Sorry about the odd sound (it may be resulting from using a different boot disk than what I installed with).
I don't yet know about games that need to access the CD drive for data during gameplay, but this is at least a good start.
In my opinion, this may be a big step toward getting many other games to work with JPC-rr.
Still can't get Star Trek to work though....but I'm not giving up yet.
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UPDATE:
I've successfully created a FreeDOS boot image (based on the most recent FreeDOS 1.2 release) that automatically recognizes the CD drive for JPC-rr. As an added bonus, it loads ctmouse with the /r32 linear settings by default.
There are a few catches:
*The boot image is a HDD image, not a floppy image.
*Unfortunately, I still cannot get Star Trek to work properly.
Any progress is progress!
I'm going to try some other CD based games and see what I can accomplish.
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I was able to contact Ilari on IRC.
ST 25th Anniversary uses CD-DA for the music. CD-DA is not emulated in JPC-rr.
So even if we could use the CD version of the game, it wouldn't help with the music.
He also said that the problem with getting the CD to work in the first place is that most of the floppy images of FreeDOS used for booting don't contain CD-ROM drivers.
I'm looking into seeing if I can make a boot image that would offer this functionality.
I'll keep you guys updated.
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You guys are awesome. I love the collaboration here.
I actually figured this one out myself while testing out the stuff mentioned above. I've already updated my run,I just need someone with power to update the submission file. EDIT: Thank you, Mothrayas END EDIT
Running out of bounds did yield faster halves. As did getting tackled instead of extra points. This extra point strat specifically allowed for a major reduction of frames (that I could have done before if I had thought about it); I stopped input mid way through the kick return on the 2nd half of the super bowl, cutting out a TON of frames.
The run will still play through to the 'game over' screen. The score total is just smaller due to missed PAT opportunities.
I'll be updating the submission text and temp encode asap.
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Does the game work with any other sound settings, or do they all produce this error? (obviously works without sound).
New processors in 1995 averaged in the 150-200mhz range (see here). Even for the few years before that they were well above 20mhz. I'd bump the CPU speed up myself. This can be done by decreasing the CPU divider during assembly in JPC-rr. A CPU divider of 5 will yield a 200mhz system; 6.6.... will yield a 150 mhz system (I don't remember if you can do decimals in the CPU divider setting or not).
While the resulting video at this speed may be incomprehensible a slowed down version can be encoded as well to watch what's actually happening while still getting the shorter time for the completed TAS itself.
Use RNG manipulation as efficiently as possible to yield your best box contents within reason for frames lost to manipulation.
Look into the teleport stuff more. You may be able to cut a lot of game out using these.
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I asked about fastloaders back in July. SaxxonPike tested a few with the core and said that some worked, but I don't believe specifics on how to use them were detailed.
I had suggested it might be implementable as an optional part of the firmware setup (assuming this is possible from a coding perspective).
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Correct on the timer. I tested through every half until it stopped being beneficial to run a regular play; after the first 3 halves.
I did not consider running out of bounds.
I may look into this, but it will have to wait. I'm focused on other projects at the moment.
I'm guessing that going OOB instead of being tackled will change the RNG of what formation the defense chooses. If so, all the dodging will then need redone from scratch. If not, it may be easy to update and re-sync by simply adding L or R to go OOB then add a few frames for the extra few yards to reach the endzone.
EDIT: Ok I had a few brief moments to look at this. Running out of bounds does indeed result in a different defensive formation. I didn't yet have time to TAS in all the dodging to see if it indeed yields a faster half or not than in the current submission.
As the defense is definitely a different formation it will require at least 2-3 halves of completely redone TAS work if it is indeed faster. The reason I say 2-3 is that in the first half of college, the extra distance to run might fully run out the clock and result in a slower half than running the play as currently submitted.
I will test further as I am able. Leaving the current submission for now.
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"Truncate event stream" simply removes all input events beyond the current point in the loaded movie.
Savestates will always have all their input events. When loaded as a movie instead of a savestate, it will play to the end of the savestate's event stream. The savestate itself will retain its event stream even if you truncate the currently running movie. To change the savestate, overwrite it with a new save after truncating.
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I've made some progress.
Within jpc-rr, I edited the fdconfig.sys file to contain the line
device=emm386.exe RAM
I then had to edit the autoexec.bat file and delete
cutemouse
I reset the system (from the file menu).
Then tried to run the game.
This got me past the memory problem....but now freedos doesn't have the CD drive installed....I don't know how to do that part.