Posts for th2o

Posted: 8/5/2014 2:20 AM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
I had this problem using 1.7.3 . I also went back to 1.6.1 to try and the same thing happened. I guess something is probably wrong on my end then, but I really can't figure out what (yet). Actually getting a different randomness when changing the player 2 track is exactly what I would like here : the only way to affect the next layout level seems to be changing the behaviour of the enemies (which react to player position), so hopefully using multitracking I could record player 1 rushing to the exit and then just tweak player 2's route to manipulate RNG...
Posted: 8/3/2014 5:31 PM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Thanks for the advice ! After some more struggle, I think the option I would prefer to use would be multitracking, but I'm having problems with it... I tried the procedure you gave adelikat (and every slight variation I could think of), but it doesn't end up doing what I would like : when I switch to player 2 after recording the first track, instead of replaying the inputs I entered it just keeps the last keys I used pressed (for instance if I went left then up, when I switch tracks it just presses up all the time). Am I doing something wrong ? On a somewhat unrelated note, is it a common thing for multiplayer games to only have one subpixel counter for multiple characters ? I'm still pretty baffled, and I'm afraid it's going to make multitrack recording challenging even if I get it to work...
Posted: 7/24/2014 3:54 PM
Post subject: Multi-player TAS howto
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Hi there, We've been stalled recently on our work on Saturn Bomberman (with Bizhawk) because of the need to control 2 characters at the same time. We have a hard time controlling both at once, and in some cases it's made nearly impossible by the fact that our keyboards don't register more than 6 inputs at once. Is there any solution in general other than using two keyboards ?
Posted: 6/16/2014 12:21 AM
Post subject: When to stop the search for optimal RNG
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Hi there, We're currently working with VicoV on another TAS of Saturn Bomberman, now that we're done with this one. This time we're going for the Normal mode. The main difference (apart from having two players to control) seems to be the additional randomness involved: each level's destructible blocks and items layout is RNG-dependent. RNG in this game is influenced by two things AFAICT:
  • The number of frames before Start is inputted at the "Press START" item in the menu determines the initial RNG.
  • Every time an action requiring RNG is taken (map generation, random item drop, most enemy movements) it is cycled.
With this in mind, what we've tried as of yet can be summed up this way:
  • For the first level, we've added wait frames before pressing Start at that first menu item until we got a 'decent' level configuration, that is one that looks close to the best we could get.
  • To prepare for the next level, before taking the exit we've 'played' with enemy movements until they left the RNG in a good state. This can be achieved by having one player standing one pixel away from the exit, and the other standing at various positions close to the enemies when they're altering course. The effects on the next level layout are drastic.
TL;DR: both the initial state of the RNG and its state at level layout creation can be altered, but in a very chaotic way (definitely no obvious way of fine-tuning level layout). In this circumstances, when is it OK to stop optimizing ? I've thought about writing a Lua script to parse the level layout and test it for good pathing patterns, even maybe have it make the players move randomly at the previous level's end to completely automate the research process. That sounds like a lot of work though, both writing it and letting it run on every level's end. Would that be overkill ? Would you say testing a number of RNG states and going for a nice-looking one (satisfying a number of pathing constraints) is enough ?
Posted: 6/10/2014 8:28 PM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
We ended up not posting anything else on this thread since all our questions were answered in the Newbie Corner, but we actually completed a run of the Master Game! You can find it here. Now we're getting started on the Normal Mode, which presents a whole new batch of challenges, mostly due to the levels being very random and having to control two players at once. We'll post a WIP once we get a couple levels done, though we're not sure about our strategy yet (let's just say we have a very strong intuition that needs checking).
Posted: 6/6/2014 2:42 AM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
@TASeditor : do you really think so? That would be cool it it could happen :) @Aqfaq : actually we intend to make more Saturn movies, starting with the Normal mode of this game which we're already well started on! Our Saturn was our whole childhood of gaming, so we're feeling quite devoted to it ;)
Posted: 6/5/2014 2:04 PM
(Edited: 6/5/2014 5:27 PM)
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
@jlun2 : we didn't know how to add a co-author, fixed. About having a "no damage" branch or not, sorry we're pretty new to this (first submission, first TASing attempt), so we weren't sure how to put it. Again fixed. Also we're currently uploading a basic video dump to YT, we'll link it soon. Link to video The boss aren't blinking as they should in it (half of them stay white, the other half doesn't change color).
Posted: 5/31/2014 1:27 AM
Post subject: Problem uploading zipped movie when submitting
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Hi, Here we are at last ! VicoV and me finished the last polishing touches for our run & submission tonight, and just as we anxiously hit the save button... We got an error.
Archive: /tmp/phpbDwHPx inflating: /tmp/nesvzip_1401499268_970/Saturn Bomberman.bkm error_handler: errstr=Division by zero errfile=/home/tasvideos/public_html/formats/bkm.php errline=74 Problems! No acceptable movie file found in the ZIP
The unzipped movie file works with BizHawk. We tried fiddling around with the file name and header lines to see if we could get it to work but to no avail. Here is a link to the ZIP file we're trying to submit. Any idea of what we could be doing wrong ? ---- Mod edit: Post was merged from another topic.
Posted: 5/28/2014 3:14 AM
Post subject: US vs PAL version (lag difference)
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Hi, I'm almost done with a no damage TAS of Bomberman Saturn, and as I was going through the movie submission rules I realized I had been using the wrong ROM the whole time -_- (PAL instead of US). I found the correct ROM, and after some initial despair when the movie file didn't play right away it turned out well: the only part I had to redo was the menus, and from the first frame of the first level I could just paste the inputs of the original movie file (whew). Actually the difference between the two ROMs was all in one place: the lag frames at console startup, at the SEGA logo (so totally outside player control afaik). When there is only 357 dropped frames with the PAL version, with the US one the count climbs up to 758 (using BizHawk 1.6.1). In those conditions, to be considered valid, should the run still use the US ROM ? Again I didn't notice any other difference between the two, except it also breaks my script (and I guess I shouldn't complaint since the movie itself plays, finding back a couple addresses won't be long compared to rerecording everything from the start).
Posted: 5/13/2014 10:22 PM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Thanks for your posts everyone :) , it's nice to know other people are interested in this TASing attempt ! We've followed your advice adelikat, and after more experimentation we've found another useful way of taking damage ! Its point is not to speed up the run though, it only helps suppressing explosions (allowing to spare enemies to include them in later combos). It doesn't seem like we'll be finding more interesting damage takes in the near future though (unless something unexpected happens). So in order to show everything we've found out about this game, I've been thinking about doing two runs instead of one : - A fastest-time no-damage run, since taking damage would save really little time and grazing explosions & enemies perfectly during the whole run looks decently amazing :) . After extensive testing it seems like taking damage saves about 5 seconds in one occasion and only a handful frames in all others, so after all I personally don't really feel like compomising the no-damage perfection over this time gain. - A maximum-points run with damage takes, since they're pretty useful for this. The point here is then to make the largest possible combos, most of the time wiping all enemies on screen with one single chain reaction of doom. Since the game gives time points for completing levels fast speed would also be important in this run, with the exception of a couple levels containing generators (static enemies respawning others continuously after they're taken out). Those generators would need to be farmed until the floor timer runs out. This run would be slightly longer (likely 6-8 minutes), but would have a finishing score around 3-4 times higher, and demonstrate different techniques. I'm currently working a test run for this and it looks both feasible and quite impressive here and there :) So, a couple more questions : - Do you think doing things this way would be a good idea ? - If so, do you know whether those two runs would meet the standards for publication ? - I haven't found the rules you're referring to Master of Puppets, could you post the link please ?
Posted: 5/6/2014 11:22 PM
Post subject: No damage run, worth it ?
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
I'm currently working on a TAS of Bomberman Saturn (Master mode, thread here), and I'm wondering whether it would be worth it to make a no damage run. The thing is now we've completed a test TAS without taking damage, and we've established that : 1) HPs are hard to get. You start without any and over the whole 16 levels you can only grab 2 without wasting time. 2) Damage takes are not often useful. There is probably no more that 2 or 3 instances in the whole run where they would save more than a couple frames. So originally we were thinking about doing 2 runs, one no damage and another fastest by all means. But from the facts above we would likely end up with two very very similar runs, with very similar times. Do you think it would be worth doing ?
Posted: 5/6/2014 7:01 PM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
I didn't try Clockwork Knight but Bizhawk is running Bomberman Saturn totally fine here, everything working as intended (memory watch, memory search, lua scripting, no desync yet though we completed the test TAS already). Made another post about it in the Saturn subforum : http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15285 . Have you tried Clockwork Knight on Bizhawk ?
Posted: 5/3/2014 11:21 PM
Post subject: WIP - Bomberman Saturn
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Hi there, We started working on a run of Bomberman Saturn with my brother (very nostalgic game for us) using BizHawk, and we're starting to get some results ! We're trying to do the Master mode (first anyway), it's really simpler than normal mode since the floor layout isn't random and there are less item types so less doubt in route planning (also this is our first TAS so we're fine with the lower difficulty really :). Here is what we have for now : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XkAneiyb6r4 The video has a couple problems (namely the boss on floor 4 not blinking and the weird pause after the Saturn logo). It doesn't show in the video as a result of this dumping problem, but the boss is taking damage non-stop (it has 180 invulnerability frames, which is longer even than a full bomb timer which is 150 frames). Also some useless inputs here and there, but they're not wasting any time and we're more focused on getting on with the rest right now, the next floors are more interesting ! Any suggestions/remarks would be nice really, we're new to this (been watching TAS videos for a while though). PS : I've done some reversing & written a Lua script to assist, I'll post it whenever it's more reliable and clean enough !
Posted: 4/20/2014 10:00 PM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
I wouldn't know in general but in this case it would be better from what I've seen.
Posted: 4/19/2014 4:48 PM
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Turned out I was just searching the wrong memory domain, you were right, thanks ! The interesting stuff is stored in Work Ram High, and the default selection is Work Ram Low, I've found some promising values after changing the domain. Off to locating everything now !
Posted: 4/19/2014 3:22 PM
Post subject: Failing to RAM Search Bomberman Saturn
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th2o
Experienced Forum User, Published Author, Player (68)
Joined: 4/19/2014
Posts: 16
Hello there ! I am trying to get started on TASing Bomberman Saturn with Bizhawk and I can't seem to get the RAM Search tool to work. I'm new to TASing, but I've been watching TAS videos for fun for some time now, and I have some knowledge of programming & computer architecture. Basically I'm just trying to apply the concepts of the Memory Search article to get the player position : - I start a run (same result with all game modes), launch the Memory Search tool without moving, press `Search' with the `Equal To' operator selected a few times. This only removes addresses the first time with a 4 Bytes size, or none at all with 1 or 2 bytes size. - I move around, pause, and search with `Not Equal To'. Now this eliminates ALL addresses, meaning supposedly nothing changed. Thing is the character just moved, at least one timer is running and the enemies are prancing around happily. There's a problem somewhere. So my guess is, either I overlooked something simple, or there's a bug. Since I'm a newbie I figured I should ask for your help here before pestering the devs with a bug report just to realize it was my mistake ;) . I'm using Bizhawk v1.6.1, with the EU ROM of Bomberman, on Windows 7 x64 Pro. Do you get the same results ? Any ideas about what should be done to get the right info ?