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What is that supposed to mean?
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I wanted to watch it but the video is unavailable :(
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Hacking a save file has been traditionally seen as a very nasty way to cheat, but in reality it only happened once as a joke, however a judge quit over it hmm no, I was sure it was the reason but even our original judging module that shows decision time rather than submission time proves that it wasn't.
#3519: RingRush's PSX Croc: Legend of the Gobbos "glitched" in 01:10.12
It's hard to tell how common this problem is to have a rule to protect against it, maybe post-moderation combined with ban is enough for those who actually lie about what they've done with save files. And we can unpublish if something goes unbelievably bad.
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Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Some time ago Masterjun suggested a neat solution to this problem that would prevent complete chaos. Allow third-party approved savegame files if the respective community considers it legit and relies on it, but if a movie is made on a full verification movie, it'd obsolete. We haven't decided anything yet, for example can the latter even be slower and still obsolete, but this case sounds like a perfect reason to start this discussion for real.
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rythin wrote:
a) simply create the TAS on a 100%ed file of the game to follow the usual convention the game is played in
Does that save file already exist and is it already verified by the game's community and hosted by it?
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arukAdo wrote:
Sorry for asking stuff about sotn again but... I would like to put "bad ending" on my list and since you sayd low% would be standart wether I use sram or not, would this also apply ?
I cant fortell if it will have any other consequences than skipping dialogues at this point, but it is likely to be the only reason to use sram.
Thx in advance for answers.
Bad ending is not a standard goal on its own, at least not yet. I don't see why this can't go to Alternative tho.
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Welcome and have fun!
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curhob wrote:
6. Speaking of which, as I stated the GUI is necessary because I did not use "--no-gui", and the header height is dependent on scale which messes with mouse Y axis position, causing desync. So there are a couple more things to make sure- the first is to open system settings in Linux, go to the Display panel and choose 200% Integer as the scale. That will make Ruffle's header bigger in proportion to the game.
I have a suspicion this can cause extra problems depending on GUI theme used in the OS, because that changes sizes of things additionally.
curhob wrote:
Try using "-g gl" if not already and see if it works.
It's a part of my default command for ruffle already.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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What's the last frame of actual required input? I'm seeing a lot of empty input at the end but I don't know how far back it can be trimmed.
I figured it out and replaced the movie.
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Uncancelled after a year, what changed?
BTW we need ROM hacks to be available online independently of our own uploads (for example on some database dedicated to hacks), especially personal ones like DropBox (the current link even requires login unless you set dl=1 in the URL).
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arandomgameTASer wrote:
This doesn't clarify why exactly images must be used in a specific order other then the game itself saying to do so, which I find a bit funny when considering most speedruns routinely exploit glitches to get around the game telling you to do things in a specific order.
If every movie rule was explained right on the rules page, it'd have been several times bigger. The one submission that spawned that rule was #6033: NhatNM's PSX Monster Rancher 2 in 58:54.55 with its several pages of policy discussion and Thread #20426: Clear cut rules for arbitrary extra CDs? /0. Only the final consensus gets written on the rules page. The 2013 debate didn't spawn the rule because it was all over the place.
arandomgameTASer wrote:
The general vibe seems to be that swapping discs arbitrarily is a form of 'hardware manipulation', in other words similar to directly modifying a console or even as far as using a cheating device. This is further tied up with cartridge tilting to exploit memory and all that good stuff,.
I disagree with this being hardware manipulation or comparable to cartridge-based tilting. Let's go over the reasons why.
The act of swapping a disc is a normal gameplay function which is accounted for by most games via dedicated menus, and on occasion more directly by pausing the game when the wrong disc is detected, such as trying to load a save file on, say, Disc 3 while Disc 1 is inserted. Cartridge tilting, meanwhile, is more directly affecting how the game is being run by separating the connections between the console and game, and is not directly accounted via dedicated menus and the like. For me, cartridge tilting is more comparable to the use of hot plates and other nonsense to interfere with the console's normal function in order to create glitches it otherwise wouldn't generate.
With my prior Xenogears examples, the Kernal Menu coming up at all doesn't happen due to the specific discs being inserted, but from incorrect data being read when trying to load and throwing up an error screen. It doesn't take frame-precise manipulation in essentially all cases I've seen to do, and is possible on real console without risk of damaging either the game or hardware.
In many ways, this use of disc swapping is very similar to sub-frame reset glitches that are done to corrupt save files. The most obvious example of this would be the save corruption TASes for Chrono Trigger, where resetting in-between certain bytes being read can lead to beating the game significantly earlier then other methods.
[2047] SNES Chrono Trigger "save glitch" by turska & inichi in 03:28.06
This process as far as I'm aware wasn't verified on console when the movies were done, although the tech behind it was understandable, and it's only in recent years where certain RTA runners have begun trying this as well by physically resetting at precise times in-between frames.
Link to video
The point being, sub-frame resets are SIGNIFICANTLY more difficult to do then a disc swap glitch and has the higher potential IRL to cause problems to hardware, but have been allowed since at least 2008. If we limit the allowance of disc swap glitches to JUST discs that are part of an average run, I don't see it as fundamentally different as exploiting how a console functions when it resets.
The analogy with save corruption sounds fair. The system does some action that depends on certain events happening (or not happening) in real life: while the program is doing its thing the user needs to not power off the device, or the user needs to put another disk in.
Trying to come up with a solid borderline for those based on accurate technical knowledge would be hard. I can't find threads about why save corruption was allowed in the first place, and posts on the first few submissions that reset during saving don't explain it. It just happened to work in emulators and on console, and then it was automatically assumed to be a valid glitch technique.
Thread #8026: How well do emulators emulate resetting during saving? happened after, and the explanation from then-admin was "because it's emulated and because it's awesome". How accurately it was emulated was questionable, but I guess fundamentally/conceptually it wasn't as bad as relying on emulator-only bugs but on bugs in games, because developers could have written protection against save corruption but haven't until later.
So my main question with unintended disk swapping is this:
Can game devs protect against disks being removed from the tray at the wrong moment? arandomgameTASer wrote:
The grey area, of course, would be using discs outside of a run's context, which I think has already been covered with the Super Mario Bros. ACE movie which uses Super Mario Bros. 3 to achieve ACE in a different game. If we were to assume a different disc was used to setup a memory card, then that could be accounted for in the movie itself. If it's JUST the usage of a different disc being inserted at the right time, that can also be accounted for in the movie itself. Whichever way you look at it, the usage of these different discs can be considered part of the movie itself and not extrinsic to it ala SRAM manipulation to load a save file that immediately beats the game, or something.
[6012] NES Super Mario Bros. "arbitrary code execution" by OnehundredthCoin in 04:52.65
That movie was a crazy technical feat aiming for amusement, so it could have only been published to Alternative. I do not think that using games images not belonging to the game in question should be eligible for Standard (aside from that unique case when the game explicitly demands arbitrary extra images to be used, but even there we limit to hand-crafted ones or other games for that system, since availability of those is a given for TASing that system).
A movie using 20 different game disks for maximum insanity works fine as a technical showcase, but not as a legit speedrun of any of those games.
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I think it's publishable to Alternative. The cheat code part makes it not eligible for Standard because that code removes a gameplay requirement instead of unlocking some feature unavailable otherwise.
Single-movie is IMO better because the setup is unique and inherent to this glitch, compared to simply unlocking in-game features as Mike said.
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curhob wrote:
Right, that should do it! So I've finally redone this project. Apart from how I got save states to work, the room scrolling and other animations are much more consistent than before, where on most frames it would move a certain amount, but sometimes it would move twice that much. Of course that is because LibTAS was set to 24FPS, even though the game was built for 32 (which again is weirdly specific). So for every 3 frames of the LibTAS animation, I would "randomly" see the game move 2 frames and chocked this up to it being a flash game. So now I don't get that janky (1) (2) (3,4) (5) (6) (7,8), but (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8), as it should be. From now on I will use Ruffle to make sure I have LibTAS set up right.
Oh, and here's the link: https://tasvideos.org/UserFiles/Info/638710464008805226
Doesn't sync for me, even if I set 32FPS inside the movie file. I followed the instructions in the submission.
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Completion is usually something already defined by the community for a given game. [2661] PSX Castlevania: Symphony of the Night "all relics & bosses" by ForgoneMoose in 36:58.32 is an example of full completion, and it has the corresponding tag. So just use that definition and complete as little as possible of that thing, even if that costs time. Lowest completion is the primary goal, shortest time is secondary. SaveRAM anchor can be used or not, both would go to Standard anyway.
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arukAdo wrote:
Edit: after investigation I realized it would make no sence to not get the extra mana for normal mode by glitching into lower level (3), so both mode will be lvl8, unless we glitch on purpose to be lower lvl, consenquently making it slower due to less mana.
which round back to your observation that glitching the lvl only matter if it makes things faster, but not for the run actual "score" (kill count and lvl at the end)
I hope this is correct?
The glitch only matters if it saves time. How counters appear to the viewer doesn't matter.
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I improved this movie by 5578 93 frames in the first 2 3 levels. Before I finish my improvement I want to debug the double damage glitch. Please don't judge the movie yet.
EDIT:
Looks like for objects that are stunned enemies whom you can pick up and throw, damage they deal is always 2 with no need to charge by running (charge timer address is $D2, projectile is charged when the value is 30+); boxes need to be charged for 2 damage; and other pickable objects need to be charged but they only deal 2 damage on the first frame after you throw them, then their damage value resets to 1.
So for non-box things that you need to throw at the boss, it needs to be charged and it also needs to be inside the boss's hitbox on the very first frame you throw it. Which happens if you're under the boss or you took damage to get inside the boss's hitbox. If the object is not inside the boss's hitbox, it will take time to reach it, by which time its damage will have already reset to 1.
Doesn't look like a serious glitch to me, the devs just decided to reset the damage after it's already been set instead of not allowing it for boss projectiles in the first place. So I don't think any actual debugging is warranted here.
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arukAdo wrote:
"low level" is only happening because of a glitch/technique that prevent exp/kill count to increase while still killing things (the game is tricked, but the viewer clearly see the kill happening), it doesnt work on everything tho.
The premise of the old pub is that despite killing 5 targets, you stay at lvl1 and 0 exp because of that trick, it works on every versions.
It appears that my assumption to reduce that to 4 targets was wrong; sorry about that, I wrongly anticipated some details and after investigation, it still require 5 kills so theres no improvement on that.
It is possible to kill hundreds of monster and stay at lvl1/0exp with the glitch, but a few select bosses or monsters are immune to it (this is why the route is not straight to dracula).
It is also possible to corrupt the save data to trick it back to lvl1, regardless of your current lvl.
This is incredibly important! If we can glitch the counter or corrupt it into something arbitrary, then it's completely meaningless. We wouldn't count a movie that only collects 1% of items and then glitches the counter to show 100% as full completion. Similarly we wouldn't count a movie that collects 10% items and glitches the counter to show 0%, as 0%. The point of such goals is in-game actions and routing that makes legitimate completion (high or low) a sensible separate goal on its own. Glitching one goal into another defeats the purpose of both, unless that glitch is the primary feature.
Given this, I'm seeing less and less value in a "low level" goal as something separate from pacifist, unless glitching the exp counter alone can result in a lot of unique gameplay, or it could be a great feature in some other goal that becomes better thanks to that glitch. Pacifist actually aims to kill the least, so it's meant to result in getting lowest actual level the valid way without glitches, naturally. And vice versa: killing more enemies than required in a pacifist movie just because we've glitched the level counter, feels like a weird addition to me.
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Interesting. IIRC jpc-rr writes final time into the movie after it's done, and frames are not very relevant because framerates are not constant.
Since jpc-rr emulates timings with decent accuracy and you can't arbitrarily speed it up beyond caps of original devices, overall movie duration in human time seems to be the only technically valid metric. I can't find a reason to disregard it in favor of anything comparably correct. There will always be upper bound on how fast inputs can be entered, and then they can be processed by the game after the movie is already over (that happens in this submission too BTW).
But for systems without a theoretical upped bound not even final duration in human time is a meaningful metric anymore, so IMO it makes the most sense to stick to defaults.
This little aspect adds important details to the new post about PC framerates that I plan to make to discuss future proof rules for it.
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arukAdo wrote:
I meant I could submit the jp3kills and an updated "low level" together, the old movie been on psxjin it would benefit to upgrade to current bizhawk
If you think they cant coexist then ... I guess I just submit the jp to obsolete it
Is it possible to get lower level while being less pacifist, in either version?
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Spikestuff wrote:
feos wrote:
one should stick to default rate.
Default being 60 right?
This turned out to be completely impossible to determine from looking at or even debugging scummvm code. If I move mouse in adrift on every frame at 100fps (vsync off), libtas shows no lag frames, meaning the game renders every frame there's different mouse input. Running it at 200fps results in lag on every other frame. If I don't move mouse at all, it's all lag, so no rendering is done. And how fast letters appear on the screen is also different: 50fps- they appear every frame, 51fps+ they appear on every Nth frame. I recommend 50 and vsync off.
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