It's been a while since my last post and it's time for an update or two. In no particular order:
- I've spent some time cooking up donation incentives. The easy ones were what was already accepted on the schedule, namely the SML2 glitch run and the VVVVVV glitch run. I pitched an idea to allow Twitch Chat to pick the game whose audio is being heard for SMB 1 + 2 + 3 with the idea being that it could be changed on the fly as donation totals change. Raelcun is (rightfully) concerned that it might not sound as good as I am mentally imagining it will and the game might not be long enough for it to make sense, but that didn't stop Spikestuff from suggesting a fourth option - anarchy, in the form of all three game's audio being heard simultaneously. If the donation incentive doesn't get met, I'll instead spend extra time with the sound team to let them know where in the commentary to switch audio or a way for me to do it myself.
- Speaking of SMB 1 + 2 + 3, I successfully console-verified all three games at the same general time by using a surge protector and a very specific combination of consoles and power supplies (I have one barely working console and one aftermarket power supply and figuring out which combination of games with consoles with power supplies with nuisance voltage took a rather decent bit of testing). These power issues initially led me to try a test by releasing the reset switches on three consoles at the same time, but that turned out to be.. quite the challenge, as captured in
this epic tweet. I eventually managed to make it work using the surge protector but the consoles weren't lined up as well as I would have liked so I'm researching methods of switching the consoles on using a single DC power connection. More testing is needed here, but I feel confident in the general concept.
- SML2 - I've been doing a bit of streaming at
https://www.twitch.tv/dwangoac on this and it *is* coming along, but things aren't exactly going well. It's unclear at this time if console verification is even possible without a lot of twiddling. The current plan is to use Endrift's GBPP but so far we haven't had much success and it's not yet clear if it can be made to work. The current expected fallback is to do everything for this game in an emulator, which isn't all bad as my intent is to show how things work using lsnes anyway.
I need to reach out to MUGG and continue to do some additional research on the best route that would work on all cartridge versions (desirable for others to reproduce by hand) as well as the best path down to memory that would work while still retaining fireballs. I'm not yet certain that's even a hard requirement, we just know that fireballs can have a different effect on memory but it's not yet clear if any of those effects are desirable. The end goal remains to gain some manner of total control but we may have to settle with subtly altering some other aspect of the game instead.
- VVVVVV - I (well,
@MrTASBot with the help of several #tasbot 140 character wordsmiths)
reached out to
Terry Cavenagh, the developer of VVVVVV to see if he would be interested in providing commentary. Unfortunately, right after that a big news story hit that was likely quite a distraction which you can read in some great coverage by Ars Technica's Kyle Orland - namely,
Nintendo pulled VVVVVV off of the 3DS to stop hackers from loading unsigned homebrew software. I'll check in with Terry after the dust has settled a bit more and see if he's willing to lend a hand. In addition to commentary I'm hoping to get a blessed copy of VVVVVV 2.0 from him.
There's still time to put everything in place but I am starting to panic a bit as I've been so busy with work and end-of-school-year activities with the kids that it's been hard to find as much time as I would like to practice. I've made some good strides in setting up a good place to stream and practice commentary, though, and I feel good about being ready from a presentation perspective even if the technical aspects are at some amount of risk. As is usually the case I won't turn down help so if you have an interest in searching around in SML2 or watching SMB 1 + 2 + 3 and providing time offsets of where interesting things happen that are worth mentioning during live commentary just let me know.
One other note - I was considering pitching a talk for
DEF CON but I couldn't decide exactly what to pitch. After considering what I could best do as an Ambassador for TASVideos I decided it makes the most sense to narrow in on just one idea, namely that finding exploits and glitches in video games using the powerful tools we have at our disposal can be a very entertaining introduction into the world of security vulnerabilities. I'd want the primary focus to be on educating people on TAS tools and turning on the lightbulb of how to take the skills used in creating TAS's and applying them to other things. Unfortunately, I was under the impression that the call for papers ran through May 15th, and instead it closed on May 2nd and I've missed the opportunity for this year. I'm sad I missed it but this is probably for the best, as planning for AGDQ 2017 is already in draft form and I can almost guarantee I'm going to be way too busy as it is. :)
As always, there's much more to come - feel free to keep the conversation going here and I'll answer any questions that come up. Thanks all!
