Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
I am getting better at making a TAS. Still need to learn how to properly use savestates and other helpful tools. On the positive end, I started the movie file over with "Proper TAS" settings enabled. Memory Card is automatically set to blank on power on. Though Sand Ocean Surface Slide is an FPS killer and it's next on my list of tracks to do right. I may have to use some graphical hacks to keep it from running terrible.
There will be a time to setup some custom machines after everything else is done. Does anyone know what parts make the best machine or machines? We can NOT use the AX/AR parts.
New WIP:
http://tasvideos.org/userfiles/info/12150404264053581
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
I've only ever done the open ladder, so I don't have any max speed vehicles. I use two for snaking and one for flying:
Snaking
Highway Gantlet-V2
- Body: Dread Hammer
- Cockpit: Sonic Soldier
- Booster: Thunderbolt -V2
Highway Condor-V2
- Body: Brave Eagle
- Cockpit: Sonic Soldier
- Booster: Thunderbolt -V2
Flying
Combat Dragon
- Body: Speedy Dragon
- Cockpit: Combat Cannon
- Booster: Sunrise 140
Aside from these custom vehicles I also use Fat Shark a lot. These may not be the best per se, but they're definitely competitive enough.
You can refer to Mr. Blarney excellent Custom Machine Guide on GameFAQs for how to unlock the parts for these. Basically, just beat some cups on expert (we want to anyway, for master difficulty) and some story missions on hard (we want to anyway, for very hard difficulty).
As I don't have a U version, I can't watch the movie right now, unfortunately. But why are you starting with time trials? Isn't it a better idea to unlock some faster vehicles first. Black Bull can be unlocked doing story, and it's a fairly good snaking vehicle. I get that speed is irrelevant for the verification movie, but a shorter movie file will make verifying easier and less desync-prone.
Why not using cheats to unlock stuff if it is the only way? It's already allowed for unlocking difficulties/game modes, so why not here? Does it really matter if the cheats are ingame or from an external device?
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
Scepheo wrote:
But why are you starting with time trials? Isn't it a better idea to unlock some faster vehicles first. Black Bull can be unlocked doing story, and it's a fairly good snaking vehicle. I get that speed is irrelevant for the verification movie, but a shorter movie file will make verifying easier and less desync-prone.
I can't seem to find how to Unlock Black Bull. What mission and difficulty?
My intention is to unlock everything for the player that we can. That way any future player has all the options available to them. I have verified the movie and will continue to do so each time I beat a track on Time Attack, and I will do the same each time I win a race in GP and complete a mission on any difficulty.
I am learning how to be a better GX racer as well. So, I can't snake yet. I am getting a little better at MT though.
What would be the "minimum" we want available? I see a parts list and Very hard story unlocked. What about GP cups? Machines aside from Fat Shark and Black Bull?
I would like to unlock and purchase the staff ghosts so that the player doing Time Attack, doesn't have to worry about getting messages about tickets or staff ghosts for sale.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Why not using cheats to unlock stuff if it is the only way? It's already allowed for unlocking difficulties/game modes, so why not here? Does it really matter if the cheats are ingame or from an external device?
It's possible to modify the save file like this. By having a verification file it can be at least proven that what was unlocked is also possible ingame.
Also, unless you know of an ingame cheat, then no.
Finally, MUGG mentioned the save file being corrupted for him in Dolphin 3.0. Does that happen to you, hegyak? :o
It did not. I re-verified the Ruby Cup Movie I made (My Current WIP) and it synced just fine and the memory card, is exactly as it should be. I tested this after the WIP was done playing. I quit from Time Attack, Stopped Emulation, set the Memory Card for Dolphin to the Move Memory Card. I see five staff ghosts in the store, 50 tickets. Just like it should be.
My guess as to MUGG's issue, is that the memory card for Dolphin may have changed in some way. F-Zero GX reads the save file and compares that to the Memory Card's ID and if they don't match, the save is "bad." The only other games that have this protection/issue is PSO. All three of them.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Regarding the AX parts (and tracks), unless this information is wrong (which only really good players could verify) much of it can be unlocked without cheats or a visit to the arcade.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/gamecube/560617-f-zero-gx/cheats
Specifically
AX Tracks: defeat all the grad prix tracks on Master difficulty
AX Pilots: defeat Story on Very Hard difficulty
AX Machine Parts: Complete Story mode on Hard
AX Cup: Unlock all of the AX courses
I don't have a copy of the game, nor the skill required, but if these are true, then it shouldn't be hard for a TAS to get them.
You can get the tracks, machines and cup from AX but only some of the parts during normal play.
Also, if I'm not mistaken, Black Bull is unlocked through beating all story missions on Normal. You get Deathborn for beating them all on Hard and every chapter gives you an AX machine on very hard. Notably Fat Shark on chapter 4. Which we want.
So that leads to the question, can a verification movie (unlocking Fat Shark -> beating story missions on Very Hard) have its own verification movie (unlocking the Very Hard chapters).
(writing from phone)
I dont know if that issue i had such a long time ago occured because of fzgx.
ive seen my memcard not working/corrupted in other games too.
Also if there is jp only parts why dont you use the jp game
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
MUGG wrote:
Also if there is jp only parts why dont you use the jp game
I can't seem to find anything on how to obtain them.
F-Zero Central wrote:
What's the deal with the custom parts in the Japanese version?
Yes, there are 15 parts to make custom ships available only in the Japanese version of F-Zero GX and only if you participated in the event where they were given away (they can't be unlocked there normally either). You can, however, use Action Replay to unlock them on your file. Enjoy.
If you know another way, let us know. We can not use an Action Replay or other cheat method. Unlocking the parts makes them available for sale in the shop. It does not (or should not) give you them automatically.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
I still think we need the input of someone who actually gets to decide these sort of things. I'm fully against using AR normally, but I believe an exception should be made for this game. Especially because it's such common practice for real time players.
One of the special parts is needed to make the best flying machine (Buffalo cockpit, IIRC), which is used for almost all the records in the open ladder. This means there's a chance we won't even beat all existing records.
So it's pretty much just up to the mods which rule we violate, really...
I still think we need the input of someone who actually gets to decide these sort of things. I'm fully against using AR normally, but I believe an exception should be made for this game. Especially because it's such common practice for real time players.
One of the special parts is needed to make the best flying machine (Buffalo cockpit, IIRC), which is used for almost all the records in the open ladder. This means there's a chance we won't even beat all existing records.
So it's pretty much just up to the mods which rule we violate, really...
I don't believe in making exceptions like this for a game just because it's popular. I mean, I understand making exceptions like when to start from a savefile and all, but using cheats? Wasn't there already a thread debating on the "legit-ness" of using uninitialized RAM? Kinda odd if using AR codes ends up being considered "legit" but not starting at an arbitrary RAM state.
jlun2: this would be an exception, not an "okay, cheats are acceptable for every game now" precedent-setting rule change.
Think of it this way: what if the pre-order version of a game gave your account access to a special character that was significantly faster than the normal characters? The character is "in" all versions of the game, but only unlocked if you use an account that pre-ordered the game, or if you use a cheat (assume there are no glitches to unlock the character without cheating). Because the unlock mechanism is to pre-order the game, the character can't be unlocked in a verification movie. The speedrunning community for that game is a mix of people who did pre-order and people who just used a cheat; there's no stigma attached to using the cheat there. Everyone uses this special character because they're so much faster than the normal ones.
Functionally the JP parts are in the same category -- the only way to unlock those parts legitimately was to participate in events in Japan that have long since stopped happening. It's impossible to make a verification movie, and it may well not be possible to match the realtime records without these parts (though it's not as clear-cut as in my hypothetical -- but it's almost certainly true that a TAS using the parts would be faster than a TAS without them).
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
jlun2 wrote:
I don't believe in making exceptions like this for a game just because it's popular. I mean, I understand making exceptions like when to start from a savefile and all, but using cheats? Wasn't there already a thread debating on the "legit-ness" of using uninitialized RAM? Kinda odd if using AR codes ends up being considered "legit" but not starting at an arbitrary RAM state.
We are attempting to get an exception due to how the Realtime community plays the same game. We are not saying, "Please give me infinite energy (boost) when I play so I can win easy." We are looking to get parity with the Realtime community.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
Perhaps a preferable approach would be to create a save file the replicates the state of having legitimately unlocked these parts. Does anyone know how the save file format works for this game? If it's a big matrix indicating whether something has been opened or not, we could set the additional parts, manually, to being unlocked. That way we don't actually have to use cheat codes for the published run. The validation movie would be played and that resulting save file modified in a very specific way.
Having said all that, perhaps we should first see what all can actually be unlocked through standard means, seems most everything perhaps can be based on that Gamefaqs link...
Perhaps a preferable approach would be to create a save file the replicates the state of having legitimately unlocked these parts.
That's functionally identical to using an AR code to unlock the parts and then resetting the console. There's still no way to make a verification movie that unlocks those parts.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Perhaps a preferable approach would be to create a save file the replicates the state of having legitimately unlocked these parts.
That's functionally identical to using an AR code to unlock the parts and then resetting the console. There's still no way to make a verification movie that unlocks those parts.
Functionally, yes. Using a save file (with the parts unlocked through AR) instead of AR during the run does however mean that the viewer can be sure AR isn't used for anything during the run, such as increasing top speed or such.
Joined: 3/31/2010
Posts: 1466
Location: Not playing Puyo Tetris
Scepheo wrote:
Functionally, yes. Using a save file (with the parts unlocked through AR) instead of AR during the run does however mean that the viewer can be sure AR isn't used for anything during the run, such as increasing top speed or such.
If I record a movie with AR codes active, and then I playback with them disabled, desync. That's why TASVideos ONLY accepts Input Files for submissions. Dolphin does NOT automatically load/enable AR codes even if the move file used AR codes. Cheats must be manually enabled and the right codes must be selected or desync.
When TAS does Quake 1, SDA will declare war.
The Prince doth arrive he doth please.
I think what we're saying is that the verification movie is not 'play this movie back on this emulator and it will create the save file', but 'start the game, turn on this list of action replay codes from fzerocentral, beat any course, then save and you'll get the same save file as what we used. if you have a problem with the codes used take it up with fzerocentral' because it's the only way.
From the looks of things, TASVideos rules are pretty rigid about "no cheats." Another community uses unlocking cheats regularly for time trial records.
Without the cheats:
* We can't use optimal parts in many game modes.
* It's theoretically possible that we can't beat an existing record without these parts.
* Even if we do beat all records, it's certainly not the theoretical limit because we don't have the parts.
Of course, with the cheats:
* We can't match what happens from a clean save and unmodified game with a movie.
* It's difficult for a community of perfectionists to define a general-purpose hard line for cheats other than "none ever."
* Whether or not we state this as an exception, people might refer to the exception with distressing frequency.
However, the parts have no effect on Story Mode, right? Verification movie to unlock Very Hard for the full story, and TAS that. Other modes still have to deal with a mess in definitions and intent.
I'm hoping outlining what I see helps in the discussion.
It's a little more subtle than that, because the cheats emulate things that you can physically do with difficulty:
-Bring your memory card to an F-Zero AX machine and unlock everything
-Get the japanese version of F-Zero GX (the AR codes give you the same parts you can unlock on japanese GX but on english)
It indeed doesn't make any effect for a story mode only TAS, because you have fixed vehicles in that mode.
It's a little more subtle than that, because the cheats emulate things that you can physically do with difficulty:
-Bring your memory card to an F-Zero AX machine and unlock everything
Any reason you can't do that in a verification movie? Or why not use the JP version?
