Post subject: Policy regarding tweaking fps values
keylie
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2842)
Joined: 3/17/2013
Posts: 392
I was wondering if there was a policy regarding the acceptable values of fps in PC Games? Standard fps is 60, but you can set fps to any value in TAS tools. I know that some Half-life TAS has been done in 1000 fps for faster bunny hoping I guess. I was wondering about that because I may plan on working on a TAS of Towerfall, which supports well custom fps. In this game, high fps values greatly improve the speed of your dashes. Indeed, when dashing, the characters starts at a high velocity which then decreases exponentially. If you press the same button again, the dash is stopped and the character keeps the velocity when the dash was stopped. So the sooner you can stop the dash, the higher velocity you will achieve. It makes a lot of difference between 60 fps and 1000 fps (roughly +50% velocity). It is also interesting to note that this game has a timer to the thousandth, which behaves correctly in 1000 fps.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1254)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11479
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
Pretty sure it needs to be moved to General.
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.
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4044
When a real human wants to speedrun Towerfall at 1000fps, what do they have to change? An in-game setting? An ini file or command line argument? Use of an external tool?
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
YaLTeR
He/Him
Joined: 12/2/2011
Posts: 129
Location: Moscow, Russia
I think if the game can be made to run as high as it can via conventional means (think options menu) then the TASer should be able to chose whichever FPS they want (since there can be a theoretical PC that's as fast as needed). Furthermore, I think the TASer should be able to change FPS to any value every frame (like lowering FPS in certain sections). That's not supported in Hourglass yet, but a number of games make use of lowering FPS in speedruns.
keylie
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (2842)
Joined: 3/17/2013
Posts: 392
Patashu wrote:
When a real human wants to speedrun Towerfall at 1000fps, what do they have to change? An in-game setting? An ini file or command line argument? Use of an external tool?
Well speedrun.com enforces vsync on and visible fps in Towerfall. If a speedrunner would want to play at 1000 fps, I guess s/he would disable vsync in the game options and use an external tool such as rivatuner to set the fps to a particular value. But theoretically, the tool is not needed, s/he would just buy a very powerful computer and disable vsync.
Patashu
He/Him
Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4044
If 1000fps can be reproduced using only powerful enough hardware and intended in-game functionality, then it should be OK.
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