I cant speak highly enough of this TAS. Headshot has done an amazing job implementing basically every possible time saver I knew about and dozens more that I wasn't aware of. On top of that, hes added tons of flair and swag in almost every map to make it an even more entertaining spectacle. I could only dream about Doom 64 having a well represented real time run and tool assisted run... now it has both! It is unfortunate about the lag clips not being possible on emulator, but such is life with the poor state of N64 emulation. I strongly believe this TAS should be published despite its inability to utilize that trick, if only because it could be ages before emulation catches up to console in this respect.
Congrats again to Headshot on his hard work!
It should be noted that the new clip is a lag based trick and I have not been able to reproduce it on any emulators so far. Until an emulator exists that can accurately emulate the lag, I don't think a TAS could utilize it. Perhaps there is like some super precise angle/speed that would let you clip with a very tiny bit of lag though, so I guess it shouldn't be completely ruled out until properly researched.
This game now seems to work with the current Bizhawk. I remember JXQ saying many years ago that he would be interested to make a TAS of it :) I also think this would be an interesting game to TAS.
The Blast Corps and Blast Dozer community have done some TAS of ILs for a while. We are all kind of amateurs at TASing and I don't think any of us have the time or knowledge to make a full optimized run, but if anyone more experienced wanted to TAS this game, we could help out quite a bit.
Here is the spreadsheet of most of the limited TAS work we have done so far:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yVOA1LjYV7_r9x8y5dXyU-UP-3pxU94iK9ZSH7PPqRo/edit#gid=0
Is there anyone out there interested in this game? I'm fairly certain it runs well on Dolphin. There have been a good amount of real time runs done and there is also a segmented run (with another one on the way) to use for inspiration. I thought about trying to do some TAS work myself, but I've been really busy with tons of other speedrun stuff at the moment.
Almost all of the documentation of this game is in this thread:
https://forum.speeddemosarchive.com/post/eternal_darkness_sanitys_requiem.html
The best (and currently only) real time speedrunner has a pretty solid time, here is his channel:
http://www.twitch.tv/zwajken/profile
The most recent segmented run and accompanying info is here (updates of the new segmented run are in previous SDA link):
http://speeddemosarchive.com/EternalDarkness.html
I would likely be interested in helping out in the TAS process if anyone else shows interest. I am involved in several other projects, mostly real time speedrunning, so I probably couldn't spearhead the TAS myself should it be started.
Along with freezing not working, when I search for values "less than" specific value "0" when searching for signed integers, the N64 RAM search eliminates every single address including those with negative values. Not sure what is up with that.
If it were true, you could text-edit your watch file.
Well some of the values shifted forward two spaces, some backwards for some odd reason. I would have to find every value from scratch regardless.
EDIT: Ah I found out what happened, N64Hawk changed to Big Endian at 1.8.2/3. That's what is causing my trouble.
Does anyone know why my RAM watchlist that I made with Bizhawk 1.8.1 does not work for any later versions, but it works just fine with the versions before 1.8.1? If it is relevant, these are all for N64 games.
Also my lua script does not work on any versions after 1.8.1, and all it does is display the memory address directly. I am certain there is no mistake in the script because it works just fine with all the other versions.
Are the memory addresses somehow all different now for some reason? That would be very inconvenient if true because I have several hundred memory addresses saved on my watchlists for multiple games.
EDIT: It looks like all the values I have re-found were shifted by two from the spot they were originally. Also, freezing my position value in RAM watch appears to do absolutely nothing? Poking the value stilll moves my character, but freezing does not lock me in place anymore.
Work has started again on making a proper watch me die difficulty TAS for this game. Those involved including myself are going to be discussing and working on this in #doomtas channel on SRL IRC (irc2.speedrunslive.com). Gonna be a long time before this has a chance to be finished, but hopefully the final product is as awe inspiring as I think it can be.
Cool we should get onto it ASAP. I need your assitance with routing, also Dimon12321 I need your help with who is going to do each level. Example... Someone does level 1, I do level 2, someone does level 3 .ect.
There is a ßhit ton of time to be saved in this run if fully optimised. IIRC a man once told me the longer the TAS takes the better it will be, so I say this should take at least 8 and a bit months to complete. Stretching to a year for a fully optimised run.
As someone mentioned values, most weapons have a random damage attack number so they should be easy to manipulate the damage of weapons to one shot kill most enemies.
I agree completely. This will likely take almost a year if not more to optimize properly, so we will definitely have a difficult task on our hands. I currently am not very good at TASing things, so I would likely be better as someone who analyzes WIPs and searches for relevant data. If needed though, I would be willing to learn more about how to actually TAS myself to make this thing a reality. Maybe we can have multiple people TASing the same level to compare strategies and optimize in iterations.
For now, I will get started on finding relevant memory addresses such as position, speed, damage dealt, etc.
Because I would love to do a collaborative TAS with Dimon12321.
Note doom is a game that I love and I would want to 100% do a TAS of this game.
I would love to help out you and anyone else who wants to TAS this game. I have a ton of data and knowledge about this game that I can share, and I may be of some use finding relevant memory addresses and such. If there is interest in this I can try and write a lua script or something with speed values, damage values, etc.
I know of someone else who cannot open BizHawk 1.7.0. He says the window doesn't even appear, but older versions worked just fine. Apparently it shows up in the processes list but disappears eventually.
Everything works fine for me, though I have no idea what is wrong for him and it seems like the problem is affecting multiple people.
Derek Clark also mentioned his interest in a TAS. Do you guys have some strat write-ups? I saw you SGDQ run...
Everything I have written up to this point is here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Aj6MbKAHQfv2dG1pNjBhdDJJTkQtejRZbUhLa1lvdGc#gid=1
It's not much, but should someone show interest in wanting to TAS this game, I would be willing to do some heavy research to document a bunch of useful information. There is also a ton of stuff in my head already that I should probably put onto paper as well.
I'm not sure if this game emulates better in Bizhawk now that it has N64 support. I know there were a few bugs in Mupen such as a shadow glitch. Anyway, I know a great deal about this game with my experience in running the game in real time, and I would gladly help out anyone who actually knows how to TAS stuff. It seems like this game had a decent amount of interest... just figured I could try and stir it back up again.
Why not use BizHawk second time around? It has RAM watch
Could he use MHS to monitor the values? I have seen that program work well with mupen before. But yeah, I agree that Bizhawk would be the easier solution.
As someone who has quite a bit of knowledge of the game and the speedrun, here is a short list of the most important TAS-only and/or real-time viable strategies that are either not utilized or under-utilized in this run:
Neutral reset/Speed multipliers
Resetting the control stick neutral to "down" means that when the stick is at rest, the game thinks you are holding up. When you then hold up on the stick, the game reads this as "even more up" and you move significantly faster. Also, the use of toggle strafe in conjunction with running at an angle (strafe-running) to increase speed is lacking in this TAS. I would estimate that upwards of five minutes, if not more, are lost by not using both of these tricks to their fullest extent.
It should be noted as well that the TAS appears to not adjust the control sensitivity in any way, severely hindering the ability to turn quickly around corners. This is a significant source of time that is bled throughout the run.
Advanced enemy manipulation
Enemies, when manipulated properly, can open doors and lower certain elevators, eliminating the need to activate them yourself. There doesn't appear to be any purposeful use of this in the run.
Spawn prevention
Standing over the spawn point of certain enemies can prevent them from spawning. Manipulating enemies to walk over another enemy spawn point can also prevent a spawn. This is particularly useful for preventing the spawn of very strong enemies that require a nontrivial amount of time to kill.
Multiple trigger skips
This game has a prolific use of movement based triggers that spawn enemies, raise and lower floors, and many other things. The best use of skipping these triggers is to prevent the spawn of enemies that get in your way, which can be done on several levels. The TAS makes use of this only once as far as I can tell.
Damage range manipulation
The nature of weapons in this game is such that damage is dealt on a range from a minimum to a maximum value every shot. This means that enemies that usually take three rockets can take two rockets if you are lucky, or 4 rockets if you are unlucky. This applies to a majority of the enemies in the game, and the TAS fails to manipulate the randomness to ensure enemies are always killed with the least amount of ammo (and in turn shortest amount of time) whenever possible.
Proper BFG usage
The TAS does not utilize the BFG to its fullest potential, often using several more shots than optimal for cyberdemons. If a TAS manipulates the BFG to output its maximum or near maximum damage output, cyberdemons should never take more than two BFG shots to kill.
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Along with these, there are several instances of poor routing or time wasted killing enemies that can easily be ran past. Most instances of these sub-optimal routing decisions appear to be a result of them be done in prior real-time speedruns, as I assume these were used as a reference in the making of this TAS. Many of these routes have since been obsoleted. Also, general ammo management leaves much to be desired.
I am glad that this game has started to receive attention from people, but as of now there is still so much that needs to be improved. I look forward to seeing any improvements and would gladly volunteer my time and knowledge to helping anyone (including Dimon) who wishes to make a more optimal TAS for this amazing game.
This game can now be TASed with the release of the recent BizHawk. I've TASed a couple ILs myself, and two Japanese TASers are toying with the game too. Just figured I'd let people know in case they were interested in this game. I don't really have the time for a full Any% TAS, but the Japanese (890 and Asutoro) might give it a shot. I don't really know what their plans are so I guess I'll just wait and see what they produce.