Posted: 4/28/2011 4:37 AM
Post subject: Versions of emulators for watching published movies
Quote
klmz
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2157)
Joined: 5/22/2007
Posts: 1134
Location: Glitchvania
NES TASer of 2018 GBA TASer of 2018 GBA TAS of 2016 Lucky TAS of 2016 GBx TASer of 2008 NES TAS of 2007
I found it annoying to figure out which version of an emulator to use for watching a published movie from the input file at times. There have been some GBx movies with notes about the emulator versions, but wouldn't it be better to add a specific category/tag row noting the compatible emulator versions into the publication header?
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 4/28/2011 9:08 AM
Quote
feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
NES TAS of 2011
Yeah, even submissions don't mention the emu version sometimes. But I suggest not only some tag about the version, but even a link to it. Or we shall have a list of all used versions with links.
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.
Posted: 4/28/2011 3:00 PM
Quote
Randil
Skilled player (1827)
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2161
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
I strongly support this idea.
My own page on this site.
Posted: 4/28/2011 3:01 PM
Quote
Flygon
Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria
Suggestion of the year.
Posted: 4/28/2011 3:13 PM
Quote
Mukki
Skilled player (1099)
Joined: 8/26/2006
Posts: 1139
Location: United Kingdom
GBA TASer of 2012 GBA TAS of 2012 Lucky TAS of 2011 Gameboy TAS of 2011 N64 TASer of 2007
Agreed. This is becoming particularly annoying in the case of SNES publications. Emulators can be quite consistent for some consoles (i.e. Gens), but quite varied for others (i.e. SNES, GBx). Will we add tags to all entries, or just those that are problematic? A notice in the movie description would suffice imo, rather than adding a slew of new tags.
http://tasvideos.org/Mukki.html
Posted: 4/28/2011 3:18 PM
Quote
feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
NES TAS of 2011
I am for adding a graph into submission that faces the version just like it does for rerecord count or so.
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.
Posted: 4/29/2011 1:50 PM
Quote
klmz
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2157)
Joined: 5/22/2007
Posts: 1134
Location: Glitchvania
NES TASer of 2018 GBA TASer of 2018 GBA TAS of 2016 Lucky TAS of 2016 GBx TASer of 2008 NES TAS of 2007
I think it would be more convenient if a publication entry could tells whether the movie file could be watched with the latest and/or most used versions of the emulator, though that would definitely increase the workload of our Movie Editors.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do
Posted: 4/29/2011 1:51 PM
Quote
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3573)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4754
Location: Tennessee
TASer of 2010 NES TASer of 2010 DS TASer of 2010 Arcade TAS of 2010 NES TASer of 2008 NES TAS of 2008 Funny TAS of 2008 TASer of 2007 NES TASer of 2007 Funny TAS of 2007
It wouldn't be hard to add a field to the movie & submission databases then display "Emulator used:" on them. Then of course it would be up to some movie editors to go fill in that info on a whole lot of movies. I think the idea makes sense though.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Posted: 4/29/2011 2:46 PM
Quote
MESHUGGAH
Other
Skilled player (1918)
Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
NES TASer of 2013 NES TAS of 2013 NES TAS of 2012 NES TAS of 2011
It won't take too long since most of the submission text already notes which emulator used. I would help if I could (no permission to edit those texts).
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Posted: 4/29/2011 5:56 PM
Quote
BigBoct
He/Him
Editor, Former player
Joined: 8/9/2007
Posts: 1692
Location: Tiffin/Republic, OH
Wouldn't it be possible to parse the emulator version out of the movie file? Or could you only parse the branch of the emulator?
Previous Name: boct1584
Posted: 4/29/2011 6:48 PM
Quote
MESHUGGAH
Other
Skilled player (1918)
Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
NES TASer of 2013 NES TAS of 2013 NES TAS of 2012 NES TAS of 2011
boct1584 wrote:
Wouldn't it be possible to parse the emulator version out of the movie file?
Depends on emulator/movie file format. Most of them only shows the "version" and not the build (for example both Snes9X v1.51.ep10r2 - Geiger's Snes9x Debugger and Snes9X v1.51 uses version 4 in the header, while Snes9X 1.43 uses version 1). edit: but I think that parsing the version (and convert it to proper version) number is possible.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Posted: 4/29/2011 7:45 PM
Quote
Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
The best would be, of course, if the entries would list all the emulator versions with which the movie works. Of course this would be a whole lot more work because the movie would have to be tested with numerous different versions of the emulator. (I assume this cannot be automatized in any conceivable way...)
Posted: 4/29/2011 8:24 PM
Quote
feos
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
NES TAS of 2011
Warp wrote:
The best would be, of course, if the entries would list all the emulator versions with which the movie works. Of course this would be a whole lot more work because the movie would have to be tested with numerous different versions of the emulator. (I assume this cannot be automatized in any conceivable way...)
Err.... How can a machine know if the game synced properly? It couldn't match these versions correct, I think. And this is far not necessary.
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.
Posted: 4/29/2011 8:38 PM
Quote
Derakon
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
If savestates are compatible across versions (or even if just memory watch is) you should be able to run the movie on each emulator and checkpoint it by comparing the hash of its savestate (or by reading out the console's memory and doing similarly). Obviously this only works if you have a version on which the movie is known to work.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Posted: 4/29/2011 10:00 PM
Quote
Warp
Banned User
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
No need even for a hash. Just compare the savestates directly to each other...
Posted: 4/29/2011 10:20 PM
Quote
Warepire
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 3/2/2010
Posts: 2178
Location: A little to the left of nowhere (Sweden)
adelikat wrote:
It wouldn't be hard to add a field to the movie & submission databases then display "Emulator used:" on them. Then of course it would be up to some movie editors to go fill in that info on a whole lot of movies. I think the idea makes sense though.
I support this, it would simplify so much.
Posted: 4/30/2011 12:14 AM
Quote
Kuwaga
Joined: 10/20/2006
Posts: 1248
The problem would rather be how to display those long lists of supported emulator versions. It'd maybe be more practical to just link to a location where the version it has been recorded with can be downloaded and leave it at that.
Posted: 4/30/2011 12:43 AM
Quote
MESHUGGAH
Other
Skilled player (1918)
Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
NES TASer of 2013 NES TAS of 2013 NES TAS of 2012 NES TAS of 2011
I'm currently started to make a simple C# program that parses the movie files and writes it in to a log file. Here's the source code and here's the current log file. (I used the moviefilesall-1.02.zip movies) As you can see @ line 85 you can easily reformat the version number into a string. So you could actually able to print out all the values into an sql insert command. Also there are movie formats where the same version is used (for example FBM). So this list could serve as a base to start identifying correct emulator version. I will post when it's complete.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Posted: 4/30/2011 1:46 AM
Quote
MESHUGGAH
Other
Skilled player (1918)
Joined: 11/14/2009
Posts: 1353
Location: 𝔐𝔞𝔤𝑦𝔞𝔯
NES TASer of 2013 NES TAS of 2013 NES TAS of 2012 NES TAS of 2011
updated: It's currently supports DSM FBM FCM FM2 FMV GMV JRSR M64 MC2 MCM MMV PJM PXM SMV VBM and YMV (OMR and ZMV is the only missing ones). Source code, and log file. Please ignore the code redundancy, I just wanted to show this way. Any comments regarding the output are welcome.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Posted: 8/14/2011 12:08 PM
Quote
creaothceann
He/Him
Editor
Joined: 4/7/2005
Posts: 1874
Location: Germany
*bump* I also second this feature request.