Posted: 4/6/2012 8:16 AM
Post subject: Input Stepcharts: The key to godlike skills?
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Brandon
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Most of us have probably heard about my SMB minimum presses submissions by now. The encodes for it all use a Lua script written by FractalFusion to generate an input display that resembles a Dance Dance Revolution stepchart. This is very cool, and shows input in an exciting, new, and precise way, but does it serve another purpose? Perhaps. Imagine: someone sees a TAS and wants to be able to achieve its record. The player will soon learn that we all have human limitations that the computer does not; as such, it'd be impossible to match it. Or is it? What if that person is incredibly good at rhythm games like Dance Dance Revolution? What if they can press and hold those buttons at the right times with near perfect precision? The solution: simplify a TAS as much as possible (Remove unnecessary input or input that it harder to follow than necessary), dump its step chart, and follow it along as you play on a console. Perhaps this would be useless for the more complicated games, but for relatively trivial ones, this might be the key to setting TAS records without the tool-assistance. So, would anyone like to try this? If I had the time, I think I might stand a chance, being a pretty good DDR player. Worst comes to worse, I do know Chris Chike...
All the best, Brandon Evans
Posted: 4/6/2012 8:24 AM
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RachelB
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What if they can press and hold those buttons at the right times with near perfect precision?
Except near perfect isn't good enough. If it isn't 100% perfect with frame precision, the entire thing will be thrown off.
Posted: 4/6/2012 8:24 AM
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moozooh
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You know, this is a really promising concept in my opinion. The only problem I see with it—but it's most definitely a very significant one—is that "minimum presses" per se isn't exactly as fast as even unassisted speedrun records, and something that is comparably fast is orders of magnitude more complex. Moreover, it could work only with games as simple as short as SMB; i.e. not longer than 5-7 minutes, having simple control scheme and a lot of running to the right for justice.
rog wrote:
Except near perfect isn't good enough. If it isn't 100% perfect with frame precision, the entire thing will be thrown off.
This is not true at all. Vast majority of TAS tricks have windows of opportunity that are much wider than a single frame. Moreover, a stepchart TAS produced specifically for a purpose such as this could be made with higher fault tolerance at a very insignificant expense.
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Posted: 4/6/2012 9:27 AM
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Patashu
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60 frames per second means that, to hit a tap in the same window (and to release it in the same window too!) you have a +/-8.333... millisecond window. In stepmania, the marvelous window is +/- 22.5ms on judge 4, and 12.25ms wide on judge 7. Here's an example of judge 7 accuracy by one of the better stepmania spread players (skip to 0:25): Link to video Then on top of that you have to add 1) the stepchart won't have any rhythm whatsoever, but you still have to be just as accurate 2) you have to release with the same accuracy you tap with, which isn't as practiced a skill 3) it's about 2/3rds as tight again as j7 marvelous attacking and you have a feat I don't think anyone can currently do. However, if it was a 30 or 24 fps stepchart (or if it had > 60 fps tolerance), it would be easily doable by the right people. EDIT: Here's something else relevant. The song GAMBOL in IIDX is infamous for being a very easy chart with incredibly strict timing windows applied to it. I can't find any source stating HOW strict it is, but I suspect it's 1 frame at 60 fps. Maybe someone could TAS it and find out? Link to video
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Posted: 4/6/2012 9:39 AM
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ais523
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It should be noted that competitive Pokémon players actually do this in order to catch flawless Pokémon; basically, calculate a TAS that does it (typically from save, not usually from power-on), then reproduce it on console to get an entirely legitimate Pokémon. (There's a rumour that tournament organisers dislike the practice but can't think of a way to ban it.) Typically it requires three frame-perfect keypresses to work, plus a large number where frame perfection isn't required; this is entirely doable in realtime with enough tries. (You can't hit an exact frame reliably, but you can aim near it and eventually you'll hit it by chance.) I've caught several Pokémon this way. The tool I used to help time, by the way, was a countdown counting down to the exact time for each press (they were several seconds apart), and also beeping a countdown to the right moment. Not that dissimilar to an input stepchart, really. I think other people use something similar.
Posted: 4/6/2012 9:46 AM
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Brandon
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Patashu wrote:
Lots of good information...
I understand the challenge at hand, but do note that many runs do not need presses / releases to be done on a specific frame (Unlike 8-2 in my latest submission). This is where the simplification part comes in: we'd have to edit the TAS to give the largest window of input that's acceptable, pressing a button on the first frame that you can and releasing it on the last frame you can release it on. If a game is flexible enough to allow this, the window can be expanded to great lengths, and luck isn't a big factor, I still think this is promising.
All the best, Brandon Evans
Posted: 4/6/2012 9:49 AM
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scrimpeh
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Reminds me a bit of this chart for Super Mario Bros 3. Perhaps that could be done for other games.
Posted: 4/6/2012 1:03 PM
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AnS
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Here's the same idea discussed 6 years ago: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=4058
Posted: 4/6/2012 1:07 PM
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adelikat
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I actually can attest to the usefulness of this idea. I am the current record holder at SDA for Mike Tyson's Punchout, King Hippo Fight. I matched the TAS time. One thing that helped greatly was, with the help of fatratknight, designed a lua script similar to what you are talking about, that would allow me to learn the timing of the punches precisely down to the frame. Even only a few days of practicing with it, I was MUCH more accurate my punches. When I started, I was hitting frame perfect shots about 10% of the time, and worked it up to 50%. At which point I trained on the console and managed to land a perfect game against him (with the help of some good luck, the odds of him behaving is only 2%). EDIT: I also have a Great Tiger script that was helping me with accuracy there, and I was getting quite accurate, but then time and other priorities became more important. I should get back to training...
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Posted: 4/6/2012 2:05 PM
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BigBoct
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If I recall correctly, the problem with GAMBOL is that the timing is OFF, not that it's STRICT.
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Posted: 4/6/2012 11:04 PM
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Patashu
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boct1584 wrote:
If I recall correctly, the problem with GAMBOL is that the timing is OFF, not that it's STRICT.
Originally the problem was that the timing was off, making newbies fail on it. Then Konami made a joke out of it by re-releasing it, but with strict timing windows. And on the [a], the timing windows were as strict as possible.
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Posted: 4/6/2012 11:08 PM
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ALAKTORN
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DS TAS of 2012
@adelikat: can you go into detail about what needs doing on Mike Tyson’s Punchout? how many inputs, of what window? (and how many fps?)
Posted: 9/22/2012 2:07 PM
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TASeditor
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If someone has robot hands in future and when it's possible to create finger movement file from the movie files of our TASes, there we have our perfect player.
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