This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8022: OtakuTAS's Genesis Jurassic Park "Grant" in 05:06.09

I have encountered a bug in BizHawk(?) that randomly causes a lag frame in the middle of the Jungle level to jump from one position to a prior frame, desyncing the entire run. Additionally, this frame is essential for both speedy play as well as RNG purposes, and mitigating this causes a slight time loss in the moment, a large time loss in the third level and possibly also two parts of the second. Unfortunately this seems to be at random even in the same movie project or movie file. This happened several times but was remedied several times by just getting annoyed, coming back tomorrow, and it was fixed. It's so odd. This file did sync for myself as well as Samsara and will likely sync for everybody. However, this did not allow for the removal of the sega splash screen before submitting. I was not familiar with the TAS timing "from power on" when starting this, as such the splash screen was overlooked until after initial submission when I was contacted by EZGames69 mentioned I could. optionally, skip the splash screen. Removing/changing elements, inputs, or even frames from the run destroys the entire run by desyncing both lag and RNG. Thankfully, this does not seem to include the splash screen (as its removal would destroy the run within the first few frames let alone over 1,000 of identical play and RNG), however, upon fixing it, this seems to trigger the glitch in BizHawk. I am looking into it further (apparently as well as Samsara). I'm happy and proud of the 4:51.8 "RTA timing" and I'll think of that in my head, especially because that is how the speedrunning community views it. Anyhow, now that I'm done glitch hunting I do plan to restart this from scratch at one point (no real way to go back and edit things without rocket science, I tried once and it took 2 hours to adjust from the ramifications of one frame change and that was only for the next level because that's as far as I had gotten) and will skip the splash screen, menu optimization (using default controls instead of my own preference), and pray the glitch either occurs on a frame that can be compensated by next (i.e. running, doesn't matter if the lag flip flops from frame 5 to 6 or vice versa, you're holding run and that is it) and as such is basically a non-issue (shouldn't affect RNG either in theory), or doesn't occur at all. There's also a few things I would like to do, which saved time but produced undesirable RNG, which may be mitigated or altered in a fresh restart with the splash screen skipped and menu optimized. For now, not counting prior to the game starting officially, I'm very proud of this run and hope you all enjoy.

Bug thread: https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/24051

very impressive! do you plan on making a tas of the “raptor” branch as well?

very impressive! do you plan on making a tas of the “raptor” branch as well?

Thank you! I am close to developing a cam hack as most of the run is off screen, might give it a go then. Most of the enemies are bypassed as they are off-screen so figure I will use lua to camhack and despawn all enemies (or most) and see how it starts to sync with the camhack and everything disabled. Grant is my favorite category though. :)

Run looked pretty nice! Is there any reason to remap the controls at the start?

Run looked pretty nice! Is there any reason to remap the controls at the start?

No. Personal preference. Then I realized the TAS timing rules. Unfortunately the bug mentioned above prevents changes. I plan to redo it at some point but until then I think it would be a real shame to have the world record sitting so much higher.

However, this did not allow for the removal of the sega splash screen before submitting. I was not familiar with the TAS timing "from power on" when starting this, as such the splash screen was overlooked until after initial submission when I was contacted by EZGames69 mentioned I could. optionally, skip the splash screen. Removing/changing elements, inputs, or even frames from the run destroys the entire run by desyncing both lag and RNG. Thankfully, this does not seem to include the splash screen (as its removal would destroy the run within the first few frames let alone over 1,000 of identical play and RNG), however, upon fixing it, this seems to trigger the glitch in BizHawk. I am looking into it further (apparently as well as Samsara).

Just wanted to quickly provide an update here since it's been a couple weeks: I actually managed to "resync" most of the run, however a lot of input editing was needed at certain points in order to line things up, to the point where I found myself actually re-TASing some sections. Because of that, my efforts wouldn't have resulted in an accurate resync, and anything I redid was likely suboptimal anyway, so I scrapped it in favor of leaving everything as you originally intended. Sorry for taking so long to report back! The run is definitely fine as-is, the gameplay improvements are way more than enough to make up for the timing slip-up. That can be corrected on a future improvement.

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5131] Genesis Jurassic Park "Grant" by OtakuTAS in 05:06.09