Topic by gather

Posted: 4/4/2011 1:18 AM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

I have several ways to improve on that run, and would like to coauthor this. Just am not sure how the workload would be distributed. Let's continue our conversations / negotiations. Edit: The team of jaysmad and Brandon has been formed. He will be the main player, while I'll find optimizations, TAS Edit when possible / necessary, and write bots if any would be useful. He will get top billing, and we will use 1.5.1. The frame wars have ended!

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 4/8/2011 4:04 AM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

Latest movie file Link to video Let me know what you think!

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 4/8/2011 5:19 AM

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DarkKobold

Skilled player (1652)

Joined: 11/15/2004
Posts: 2202
Location: Killjoy

Looking good - the frame war definitely paid off, this version looks much cleaner. Hopefully you two maintain this same level of quality, it will make for a great run.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 4/8/2011 5:22 AM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

DarkKobold wrote:

Looking good - the frame war definitely paid off, this version looks much cleaner. Hopefully you two maintain this same level of quality, it will make for a great run.

Thanks a bunch. jaysmad deserves the majority of the credit at this point, as I've mainly been managing everything (Running a repository, merging segments, editing in some extra web shots, etc). That said, I think we've decide that I'll be doing Wolverine's stages while he tries Cyclops' and Storm's, though we haven't decided who's getting custody of Gambit's stage yet (We might split it).

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 4/8/2011 10:00 PM

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laranja

Player (184)

Joined: 12/24/2010
Posts: 144
Location: Brazil

Wow a lot better now, stages are fast paced, nice web trick to get a speed boost, also on spidey 2nd stage the wind was well used, not touching any column, I'M Just not sure about the first boss battle, the range was a bit mid-like, you can shot 4 shot if I'm right, but to shot others the shot must hit or go off screen, so maybe getting face to face to the boss might help?

My main objective here is to TAS the most obscure games titles!

Posted: 4/8/2011 10:24 PM

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jaysmad

Other

Experienced player (932)

Joined: 12/1/2006
Posts: 629
Location: Mom's

laranja wrote:

Wow a lot better now, stages are fast paced, nice web trick to get a speed boost, also on spidey 2nd stage the wind was well used, not touching any column, I'M Just not sure about the first boss battle, the range was a bit mid-like, you can shot 4 shot if I'm right, but to shot others the shot must hit or go off screen, so maybe getting face to face to the boss might help?

Thats a very good idea you got but sadly, by the time i get to his face, he does two things that refrain me from doing so. First he shoots fireballs then he swings towards me. So what i did his, got close enough to then used the "Backward Webshot" wich is simply shooting one frame, at the opposite direction i am holding, while in mid-air. When doing this while on a ledge, i can perform the BW without jumping so this helped me a-lot in not missing a chance to shoot.

Posted: 4/8/2011 10:42 PM

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laranja

Player (184)

Joined: 12/24/2010
Posts: 144
Location: Brazil

jaysmad wrote:

Thats a very good idea you got but sadly, by the time i get to his face, he does two things that refrain me from doing so. First he shoots fireballs then he swings towards me. So what i did his, got close enough to then used the "Backward Webshot" wich is simply shooting one frame, at the opposite direction i am holding, while in mid-air. When doing this while on a ledge, i can perform the BW without jumping so this helped me a-lot in not missing a chance to shoot.

Hmm I see now, hmm then how about trying a close jump on the last shots before destroying the boss? IF its possible to hit him before his fireballs hit you? and is web-swing stronger than web-shots?

My main objective here is to TAS the most obscure games titles!

Posted: 4/20/2011 9:05 PM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

We should be posting a video of the Wolverine and Cyclops stages shortly.

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 4/22/2011 8:48 PM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

Link to video Before anyone asks, yes, everything I did in Juggernaut's stage has a purpose. I redid it over and over again, trimming off nearly 100 frames each time until I ended up writing up a page of notes trying to find the best strategy. I'll write them into our submission notes, but for now, I'm wondering if anyone wants to take a guess why I did what I did. :) I'd upload a version of the .smv to Microstorage, but I'm having issues with it. Here it is on MediaFire.

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 5/4/2011 5:52 AM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

Link to video Will resolve shortly. About half way there!

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 5/4/2011 10:50 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2468)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

I know it's kinda off topic, but why is your .smv file about 10mb in size? edit: sorry to ask such a question (again), but how do I fix this graphical errors?: [URL=http://img690.imageshack.us/i/srevengeu000.png/]

[/URL] by the by, despite the .smv file being that big and the graphical errors I'm getting, it's playing fine here.

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.

Posted: 5/5/2011 1:02 AM

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laranja

Player (184)

Joined: 12/24/2010
Posts: 144
Location: Brazil

Heye man, nice to see progress going on, but I got a question... Based on the last encode by Brandom, at 9:50 you grab a huge ruby, it makes your lifebar orange, as well IF I'm right it increase your firepower as well, because you need 2 shots to kill normal enemys and after you grab da ruby you just kill in one shot, so MAYBE the damage increase can be used on the boss as well, even being around 8 shots if I remember well but it can already save some time right? Also at 8:03-8:05 you make a jump but hits the wall a bit, maybe you can jump on the last enemy plataform without touching the enemy to make a jump? if its possible of course.

My main objective here is to TAS the most obscure games titles!

Posted: 5/5/2011 6:24 AM
(Edited: 5/5/2011 8:19 AM)

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jaysmad

Other

Experienced player (932)

Joined: 12/1/2006
Posts: 629
Location: Mom's

I have the same problem here. What i do is take background #3 off. It does not solve the problem but let's just say it helps.

laranja wrote:

Heye man, nice to see progress going on, but I got a question... Based on the last encode by Brandom, at 9:50 you grab a huge ruby, it makes your lifebar orange, as well IF I'm right it increase your firepower as well, because you need 2 shots to kill normal enemys and after you grab da ruby you just kill in one shot, so MAYBE the damage increase can be used on the boss as well, even being around 8 shots if I remember well but it can already save some time right? Also at 8:03-8:05 you make a jump but hits the wall a bit, maybe you can jump on the last enemy plataform without touching the enemy to make a jump? if its possible of course.

It seems to go orange but i do not see this on the emulator. It's really weird but i checked it out anyways. Even without taking the ruby, those three guys die with one shot. Although being exactly like the others, these have lower HP. Take for example, the two guys in front of the mini-boss sentinel. They have much more HP then all the rest. Edit: I checked on another screen and it does turn orange. So all that is left to see is if i can reach the sentinel while orange. Thanks for the heads up. Edit 2: Just checked and i can't. Even if i grab it at the last second. For the part around 8:05, i knew the question would pop up. I checked and double checked for a better way. Don't think i haven't noticed. It really is horrible, to put something like this in a game.

Posted: 5/5/2011 6:28 AM

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Brandon

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Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

Dooty wrote:

I know it's kinda off topic, but why is your .smv file about 10mb in size?

If I had to guess, it's probably some side effect of heavy usage of TASEditor. It's a pretty hacky program at times, so I wouldn't put it past them to make the size abnormally large. Still, this is complete speculation.

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 5/5/2011 5:16 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2468)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Thank you guys, turning off background #3 kinda solved the problem, but the life bar is also gone... wierd enough, I've tested it on Snes9x 1.52 and it plays your movie perfectly, with no graphical error! too bad TAS Movie Editor makes your movie file so big, it's an invaluable tool, some of my movies would not exist without it.

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.

Posted: 5/7/2011 7:49 PM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

Dooty wrote:

too bad TAS Movie Editor makes your movie file so big, it's an invaluable tool, some of my movies would not exist without it.

There's probably a way to lower the size once we finish.

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 5/24/2011 7:40 AM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

Although we don't think it is necessary to release any more WIPs publicly, this project is far from dead, and we will have a complete rough draft done by the end of the week. It's nearly impossible to transfer these files now anyway, as TAS Movie Editor has made the file size 80 MB. Worst comes to worse, when we finish completely we can input every frame in manually, but I'm sure there's an easier way to reduce the size than that.

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 5/24/2011 3:14 PM

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Derakon

Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960

Shouldn't be too hard to make a Lua script that just records what buttons were pressed on what frames, and another to mirror that back in a new recording. Or if you're confident in your binary file editing and knowledge of the movie file format, a script to read input and write out a new movie file. Certainly easier than manually recreating the input in either case.

Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.

Posted: 5/24/2011 6:18 PM

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praetarius3

Player (114)

Joined: 10/21/2010
Posts: 138

you could try the following: -make a new input file; 1 frame is enough, just make sure to have the same settings -open your old input file with TAS Movie Editor and copy the whole input -paste the input in the empty input file -check if the 1 frame from the empty file is still there (e.g. total movie length is 1 frame to long); if yes, delete that single frame; should probably be the very first, just compare where the first actual input starts

Posted: 5/25/2011 3:15 AM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

Our first draft is 24:36 with 800340. I am confident we can lower the former and raise the latter. But, it's safe to say I'll be taking a break first...

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 5/25/2011 11:02 PM

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laranja

Player (184)

Joined: 12/24/2010
Posts: 144
Location: Brazil

Just watched the Draft, its seem pretty good for me, however, I noticed somethings I would like to obviously ask. On Storm stage level 2, there is a part where you are avoiding 2 enemys beams, it increases entertaining but also increased lag, was this intentional? On the same stage, on boss battle, if I remember, there is a room to the right where you can pick another lightniing bomb right? maybe I'm wrong but if there is really another bomb, maybe you could spend the 2 ones you have to hit the top part of the boss while the water is still going up, swim there pick the bomb and then finish him? Hope it helps.

My main objective here is to TAS the most obscure games titles!

Posted: 5/26/2011 4:50 AM

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jaysmad

Other

Experienced player (932)

Joined: 12/1/2006
Posts: 629
Location: Mom's

1. I checked in that room to the right and there is no bomb. There is only the last water-tank and it is a useless waste of time to go there. One improvable is the last 3 rings, on the boss. I'm pretty sure i can blow them up, sooner. 2. I checked for that lag... I'm pretty sure you mean around frame 55200. I did not see any lag, at all. Maybe you mean, at some other point. There is when i start this level... A bunch of fish charge right at me. It creates lag but i tried to reduce it as much as possible, by killing some. The thing is, when i blow up anything, i need to wait for it to have stopped exploding before being able to shoot again. That is why i just crashed into them. There is a couple of things, that i would like to improve. Either point, entertainment or time wise. Thank you very much for all the ideas and for contributing in the progress of the run, btw :)

Posted: 5/29/2011 12:51 PM

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Dooty

Expert player (2468)

Joined: 6/2/2009
Posts: 1182
Location: Teresópolis - Rio de Janeiro - Brazil

Brandon wrote:

TAS Movie Editor has made the file size 80 MB.

I just found out how to fix this the easy way; open your file in TAS Movie Editor again and instead of Save, choose Save As.... edit: it fixed my 128MB DKC3 file, but somehow it made your movie unplayable, this fixed your movie: open your 80 MB file in Snes9x and create a save state, open your Saved As... file, toggle your movie to Read-Write and load your save state, toggle again to Read-Only and it should work again.

I am old enough to know better, but not enough to do it.

Posted: 6/1/2011 4:16 PM

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Brandon

He/Him

Editor, Player (191)

Joined: 11/21/2010
Posts: 914
Location: Tennessee

OK, so, we have two boss battles to fix up before we can document and submit this. While we do this, we have one more concern that might be above our heads: I was trying to edit in some more points to this run as I know that there are some tokens we've skipped and some enemies we could have defeated without losing time. I did this and succeeded. However, when I got to Cyclops' stage, it desyncs. I figured "Oh, I have to add a frame to fix this, so this improvement must be ignored." Quite to the contrary, this actually saved a frame. I'm trying to figure out why. I think there's some variable in the background that decides when the "Good job, Hero!" screen shows up, and that perhaps it is dependent on score. Could someone help me figure out what caused this improvement so I could find others? http://www.mediafire.com/?5a85gy8pwt3q9a8 Update: I have saved 4 seconds from the Black Queen fight. I am convinced it is perfect, which is very surprising as I never thought I'd find a strategy that allowed me to hit both of her arms constantly, always keeping her stunned. My TAS repository is now public, so feel free to check out the current version. I'm sure we'll have more improvements before submitting, but jaysmad seems to be busy right now, so I'll have to realistically shoot for a submission at the end of July.

All the best, Brandon Evans

Posted: 6/16/2011 4:30 AM

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