Posted: 8/27/2014 9:02 AM
Post subject: Thought I'd try my hand at TASing
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Ford
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I thought I'd start small, and figured nothing could be smaller than an Atari game. I immediately began running into issues with how Bizhawk emulates the Atari games I chose (I'm using 1.7.4): I started first with Yars' Revenge, figuring I'd just reach the Easter Egg as fast as possible. I almost immediately abandoned that notion when I discovered glitched force field tiles just hanging out in the neutral zone like they'd always belonged. The Yar was able to fly through them from right to left, but not from left to right. It was also not able to eat or destroy them directly, though they did vanish when other force field tiles were destroyed. I tested this again with a ROM from a different location, as well as a different emulator. The result was the same regardless of which ROM I used, yet Stella and RetroArch both emulated the game properly. Sadly, they don't appear to have movie-recording abilities. I then moved on to Dragonfire. Things were going well, until I decided to take a break and just play the game in real time. It was then that I discovered that, while in a treasure room, the hero teleported directly to the entrance and hid behind the door if he ran to the right in certain locations. While it's possible to hide behind the entrance door in real-time, teleporting is not possible. Once again, I tried the ROM in RetroArch, and it emulated properly, albeit a bit fuzzy graphically. Apart from not using Bizhawk 1.8.0 (the changelog makes no mention of any changes to Atari emulation), am I doing something wrong?
Posted: 8/27/2014 10:55 AM
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hegyak
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It's probably due to the fact that the Atari 2600 core has not been thoroughly tested. These reports do help us find errors and gives us notice on things that need fixing.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Posted: 8/27/2014 2:53 PM
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Ford
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Joined: 3/5/2013
Posts: 183
Location: California
Okay, no biggie. I'll just have to find a game that works properly in the interim. If I find weird stuff like this again, where should I report it?
Posted: 8/27/2014 2:58 PM
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adelikat
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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
Ford wrote:
If I find weird stuff like this again, where should I report it?
You just did. And thank you. Atari 2600 emulation in BizHawk is pretty solid. But it isn't to the quality of Stella, yet. Stella has no rerecording, you are "stuck" with BizHawk. (Retroarch is just a wrapper for stella). But games that have problems like that, are in the minority by far. I'm interested in improving the atari core, but it can't be as high a priority as tastudio, or a good debugger tool, or the GBA roll out, or jabo support in n64, and who knows what else will pop up in the near future. But I intend to polish it more, in which case, these kinds of reports will be nice and helpful.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Posted: 8/27/2014 5:28 PM
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Ford
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Joined: 3/5/2013
Posts: 183
Location: California
Well, I meant like for the future, if I find more Atari ROMs that BizHawk doesn't emulate properly. Would it be easier if the reports were in this thread, in the BizHawk forum, or in game-specific threads on the Atari forum? Sounds like you have a lot of irons in the fire, so I'll just keep moving from game to game, looking for one that emulates properly so I can get some good practice in. I'll return to the previous games later when BizHawk sees an update that improves their situations. Thanks for the feedback; I'll check back here later today to see in which thread you'd like reports of incorrectly-emulating ROMs to be submitted.
Posted: 8/27/2014 5:30 PM
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adelikat
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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
The best place to report future atari games would be the issue tracker But if you find a number of them, maybe a new thread in the bizhawk forum we could keep a list specifically for Atari 2600. Because that core is developed "in house" (not a ported emulator), then it is appropriate to post emulation issues like that.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Posted: 8/29/2014 4:19 AM
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Ford
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Joined: 3/5/2013
Posts: 183
Location: California
So I thought about my options with Atari games. I wanted it to be a game I knew reasonably well, a game that wouldn't require heavy luck manipulation, and one that was fairly short (I've had a history of biting off more than I can chew when I start a new form of art, and I didn't really want to repeat that mistake). I eventually wound up TASing the first tunnel of Vanguard, mainly because I thought the second tunnel may have been developed by TOSE's department of redundancy department. I had actually wanted to avoid touching that game for a while due to a recent submission of the game getting rejected, but there were very few games that met all the above conditions I listed that were also being emulated properly by BizHawk. Would it be more appropriate to discuss a 10110-frame 604 rerecord movie performed by someone who only used savestates within the space of a single day here in the newbie thread or in the Vanguard thread on the Atari forum?
Posted: 8/29/2014 1:25 PM
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hegyak
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If your talking about a particular game, please use the game's thread when possible.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war. The Prince doth arrive he doth please.