Submission Text Full Submission Page
Battletoads for the GameBoy is a platformer following on from the NES version and containing levels with a wide variety of gameplay.
Here is an improvement to Battletoads that I worked on while improving GBHawk. The original run was poorly emulated at the cutscenes.
The primary improvement is in the boulder level where a out of bounds glitch is used to skip most of the level. This is already known and used RTA, so the old run was also quite outdated.
I also improved some of the latter levels by a few frames, notably the rappelling level. Some of the bosses though are 1-2 frames slower due to differing RNG but levels are still faster overall.

ThunderAxe31: Judging.


TASVideoAgent
They/Them
Moderator
Joined: 8/3/2004
Posts: 15639
Location: 127.0.0.1
This topic is for the purpose of discussing #6593: Cardboard & Alyosha's GB Battletoads in 09:04.34
Lobsterzelda
He/Him
Skilled player (1260)
Joined: 3/17/2019
Posts: 284
Oddly enough, I happened to be in the middle of working on a TAS of this game, but it looks like you beat me to the punch. On the bright side, I was still in the middle of TASing level 1 when you posted this, so I didn't waste too much time. In case anyone's curious, here's a link to what I had done so far: http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/60620252679467333 I haven't checked your movie yet, although I doubt there's any places in my movie where I saved time over your final TAS.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3830)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2834
Location: US
I didn't try to improve level 1, so it looks like you are ahead by a bit already. You would have to play through a bit more of the game though to make sure you don't have RNG problems.
Lobsterzelda
He/Him
Skilled player (1260)
Joined: 3/17/2019
Posts: 284
Alyosha wrote:
I didn't try to improve level 1, so it looks like you are ahead by a bit already. You would have to play through a bit more of the game though to make sure you don't have RNG problems.
In that case, I will keep working on my submission to see if I can save time over this run. I tried to play back your movie on BizHawk, but it wouldn't sync (presumably because of the length of the GameBoy load screen from the BIOS).
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3830)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2834
Location: US
Yeah you need to adjust the movie if you are using gambatte because they are timed differently. I tested gambatte as well and with a few adjustments it did sync just fine, but unfortunately I don't have that file anymore. It shouldn't be more difficault then adding / subtracting a fe blank frames here and there though.
EZGames69
He/They
Publisher, Reviewer, Expert player (4477)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2766
I really do not agree with how GBHawk is timed, assuming we're talking about how loading is shortened to one frame instead of a couple like it is in gambette. while yes the times will not change due to cycle based timing, it still makes it hard to do comparisons like this.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3830)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2834
Location: US
This is GBHawk in 2.3.3. Every input frame is now exactly the same length. Gambatte still uses a variable length frame so comparisons are still not one to one.
EZGames69
He/They
Publisher, Reviewer, Expert player (4477)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2766
So loading is not one frame anymore?
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3830)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2834
Location: US
No, it's now real time. GBHawk has changed significantly since 2.3.2.
EZGames69
He/They
Publisher, Reviewer, Expert player (4477)
Joined: 5/29/2017
Posts: 2766
nice, in that case forget what I said. here's a temp encode: Link to video
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Lobsterzelda
He/Him
Skilled player (1260)
Joined: 3/17/2019
Posts: 284
Just to double-check: could a movie made on BizHawk 2.3.2 obsolete this movie if it’s faster than this movie, or does it need to be done on BizHawk 2.3.3?
Site Admin, Skilled player (1256)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Char­gogg­a­gogg­man­chaugg­a­gogg­chau­bun­a­gung­a­maugg
If the optimization strats are not the result of worse emulation, it can obsolete it.
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.
Alyosha
He/Him
Editor, Emulator Coder, Expert player (3830)
Joined: 11/30/2014
Posts: 2834
Location: US
Lobsterzelda wrote:
Just to double-check: could a movie made on BizHawk 2.3.2 obsolete this movie if it’s faster than this movie, or does it need to be done on BizHawk 2.3.3?
If you are using gambatte it doesn't really matter which version you use, it hasn't changed since 2.3.2. Really though we should start disallowing older BizHawk builds, most of them are very obsolete. I see you have a complete level 1 now with a 2 second save, so I'll cancel this one, there shouldn't be any hangups that cost 2 seconds. Feel free to use it as a baseline or just avoid redoing the tedious autoscrollers.
TASVideosGrue
They/Them
Joined: 10/1/2008
Posts: 2792
Location: The dark corners of the TASVideos server
om, nom, nom... blech!