Congrats to the winners!
I'm happy to help with putting together the final run if it's needed. I think we (team 7) were a little bit faster on level 11, level 12 and maybe level 5 boss. There's also the potential level 7 timesave that Exonym mentioned. So there will need to be re syncing done. I haven't checked other teams segment times yet.
I think the best to do is making the best 1rst level, show it to everyone then everyone that wants try to improve the first level then we take inputs for the fastest level 2 etc... Because we all know that resyncing this game is very very difficult ! I won't be able to resync if i have an improvement somewhere if it's not on the last stage.
When I saw the game was going to be a playable McDonald's commercial, I had very low expectations for the finished TASes, but I see I was too quick to judge. The winning TAS, at least, is pretty entertaining
(Haven't watched the others yet)
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
The game is actually more sync friendly than you might think, providing you end a stage with the same subpixel and same apple boost. The exceptions to this rule are usually stage 4 and stage 9, because some of the enemies used in stage 9 are based on some global timer for when they move or something. So those stages have to be redone manually probably.
The other exception is of course lag, which is usually just fixed by adding or deleting frames.
When I saw the game was going to be a playable McDonald's commercial, I had very low expectations for the finished TASes, but I see I was too quick to judge. The winning TAS, at least, is pretty entertaining
Never judge a burger by its wrapper.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
For sync issues, here's what we've come up with that carries over between stages:
* X subpixel
* X object boost (like from the apples we keep stepping on)
* Tile touched (0615 - Tile Storage, or "wrong warp" as it was called)
* Global timer (007D, I think)
* RNG (008B)
Oh, and the apple power-up, lives, score...
The RNG is just a matter of pressing Start and Select, and sometimes other buttons if they don't interfere with motion. It is a CPU cycle RNG.
Enemies have their timing based on 007D (my notes are rather scattered, I think that's the address). Some of them change their motion every 8 frames.
Most of our sync issues went away when we lined up the subpixels. There were still RNG and global timer to deal with.
First post has been updated with YouTube encodes for all submissions. There is also a YouTube playlist if you so desire.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
What's a Dream Team Contest result without having the whole race compiled in one video?
Horse race encode, featuring all 5 submitted results in one video, is up now:
Link to video
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Thank you Mothrayas for the comparison video! I love that kind of stuff.
Thank you Memory for arranging the competiton this time around!
Congratulations to team winner for being winners.
Now, how about we all go to the resource page
http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/DonaldLand.html
and write down what we found out about the game. For example:
* What are all the quirks of the movement mechanics?
* What is the fastest way to travel horizontally?
* How does the quick kill on the Ghost Town boss work? Don't think I've seen that one explained yet...
Horizontal speed works in two facets:
* Base speed
* Boost from objects you stand on
Base speed is based on holding left or right, in general. Usually, you need to hold Right or Left alone, not even Up or Down, or else you get zero acceleration.
The game will also apply a deceleration factor every frame, even if it looks like you're accelerating just fine. The net effect of walking on the ground without B held will look like +32/256, but this is after the +64 from holding Right and -32 from the friction. The distinction is important if you need to stop, as then the numbers add if your speed is headed toward zero.
Of note, acceleration takes place first, then deceleration acts on the resulting change. As a result, it's usually easy to hit exactly zero speed when crossing over that point.
Usual worlds
1+128/256 Maximum speed
2+0/256 Maximum speed, B held
-32/256 Deceleration on ground
+64/256 On the ground
+96/256 On the ground, holding B
Also applies to standing on objects.
-0/256 Deceleration in the air
-1/256 Deceleration in the air if Left/Right state is not empty and different from last frame
+32/256 In air, A never released since jump
+64/256 In air, jump not made or A was released at some point
+24/256 In air, Left/Right direction changed at least once
If you need to avoid air acceleration, but store the +64 for later, keep Down or Up held, while also keeping Left or Right held since the start of the jump, as that won't drop to the +24 acceleration.
Sky World (stage 4)
0+160/256 Maximum speed
1+0/256 Maximum speed, A held
-5/256 Deceleration
+16/256 Acceleration
Cave World (stage 6), in ice zone
1+0/256 Maximum speed
1+128/256 Maximum speed, holding B
-3/256 Deceleration on the ground
Numbers are otherwise identical to the usual stages. You actually accelerate faster on the ground here, although the limited max speed would discourage using it.
The icy state is set if you stand on terrain, and cleared if you are falling in the air. The icy state is preserved on the upward portion of the jump, and while standing on objects. If the icy state is cleared, normal physics take place (max speed, deceleration)
Ocean World (stage 9), not final segment
2+0/256 Maximum speed
-16/256 Deceleration every frame
+512/256 Press A
I've noted standing on objects drop your base speed to zero. If, however, you aren't holding Left or Right, and hold Down, this deceleration to zero won't happen, and just the usual -16 takes place.
The boosted portion of X speed is dependent on the object you're currently standing on. I've gone on about base speed already and want to stop. Just the X axis. Quite a bit to type out.
The funny thing is I watched most of the speedruns and youtube TASes on like day 1 of the competition to get an idea of the game. And for some odd reason I never took note of the wrong warps that occurred. Instead we just dove (dived?) head first into making a pioneer movie and learning the ins and outs of the game. It wasn't until there were about 2 weeks of competition left that we were kind of out of ideas, so I just decided on a whim to rewatch the speedruns. I about spit my drink out when I first saw the stage 9 warp and wondered how in the heck that slipped our attention.
Needless to say that would have been embarrassing submitting a file that didn't have any warps in it!
Anyways, nice encode Mothrayas, and it looks like team 7 had a faster stage 12 overall based on that movie.
Joined: 4/7/2015
Posts: 331
Location: Porto Alegre, RS, Brazil
Congrats Team 4 for this excellent run! I was amazed that you got the Oasis Warp, it's so clever and looks so cool. It seems that I scratched it too soon from the possible warps :p
Congrats to all the other teams that submitted as well, it's a complex game with interesting glitches, your runs are great too.
Thanks Mothrayas for the horse race encode, sad that my team wasn't featured there. And thanks Memory for hosting this great contest, I really enjoyed this game (c'mon, how can you not love a game that has a typo right in the first screen).
About my team, even tho we didn't finish the run (we kinda gave up on level 2), it was great to work with them. Thanks MUGG, TASeditor and Tompa!
Tompa wrote:
Just writing here to express how sorry I am that I completely let my team down for this event...
I found myself too busy the first weeks, after that I've practically lost interest and motivation to practically everything. And I never showed up to tell this to my team either, I just didn't know what to say, pretty much, and I still don't.
Sorry.
Don't mind Tompa, really. You worked on nice stuff during this period, I could never be upset with you. Thanks for caring about us, and thanks for introducing me to the team.
Once again I deviated from the main purpose of the contest: TASing. Got so super focused on research that I barely did any serious input.
Cons: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (this is not a Team 5 reference)
Pros: 33% of the RAM mapped, a few glitches found (tho the main star here is the $0615 Warp Tile Glitch, which, surprisingly, was found by all the teams), a full sprite list (I named each one of them, it was fun), 3 great lua scripts meant for TASing, a bunch of minor research scripts, level maps, images of every single 16x16 tile, documentation about the level data format, and a disassembly (courtesy of Raidenthequick, thank buddy!). Thanks MUGG and TASeditor for your work on this extensive research.
I'll publish this all later today, it's all well organized in our spreadsheet but I'll make it look better: I'll publish the documentation on the GameResources page, the images on VGMaps and Spriters Resource, and the scripts and the disassembly on GitHub.
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math.
My things:
YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
Games are basically math with a visual representation of this math, that's why I make the scripts, to re-see games as math.
My things:
YouTube, GitHub, Pastebin, Twitter
I'm never going to work on this game again, that being said:
Brunovalads, one little bug I found right off the bat, when everything is enabled and cheats are enabled, the "Cheats allowed" red text does not show.
About suggesting features, feel free to add the drag & drop thing from my script if you want. If you need help understanding my script, let me know.
Horse race encode, featuring all 5 submitted results in one video, is up now:
Link to video
