Ecco the Dolphin (Genesis)

2006-06-07 10:40:35 pm

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Hope this thread doesn't get derailed any more but pretty sure it's supposed to look like that. All the gamma, black level, bt8x8 gamma settings are at defaults, and the dscaler team has definitely put more time into figuring out good settings for my particular card than I ever will.

RS is a really bright, colorful game with a day/night system to boot, and that screenshot is probably from around 10am or so. If you're talking about the game's dialogue letterboxing being a bit noticably less dark than the surrounding black, I'm pretty sure that only happens in this game, and only in the daytime.

nate

2006-06-08 05:47:53 am

there is no black in that picture. darkest i could find was ~#171717.

Enhasa

2006-06-09 06:52:54 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Hmm, you're right. Thanks for the heads up. The best I could find is 14/19/13 around the edges. It might look fine to me because of my eyes/monitor settings; I can't notice any difference between the "black" there and the 0/0/0 SDA black. I can't test the RGB of the actual display of course since it uses hardware overlay. It's quite possible that the capture is not exactly what I'm seeing while playing, since it has to be converted from YV12 to RGB to make a screenshot.

The black not being really black occurs somewhere along source -> card (DScaler uses direct hardware access instead of DShow filters btw, so the picture can be adjusted at the hardware level) -> software -> screen capture -> jpeg compression. At this point I'm thinking my cheapish card (where I would compensate by setting the gamma lower) or the capture itself. I checked out a jpeg screenshot of a PC game btw, and got 0/1/20, but that might just be a source thing there.

Incidentally, the black in my avatar isn't really black either, but it is in single digits. This is some kind of Pandora's box apparently; I think maybe I'd rather be blissfully ignorant. WHAT IS REAL?! lol Tongue

I'll try to figure this out later maybe when I feel like it. Although of course I'd have to get around the fact that whatever you're used to will look normal, and anything else looks "wrong."

Sorry Ecco.

Hmm, you're right. Thanks for the heads up. The best I could find is 14/19/13 around the edges. It might look fine to me because of my eyes/monitor settings; I can't notice any difference between the "black" there and the 0/0/0 SDA black. I can't test the RGB of the actual display of course since it uses hardware overlay. It's quite possible that the capture is not exactly what I'm seeing while playing, since it has to be converted from YV12 to RGB to make a screenshot.

The black not being really black occurs somewhere along source -> card (DScaler uses direct hardware access instead of DShow filters btw, so the picture can be adjusted at the hardware level) -> software -> screen capture -> jpeg compression. At this point I'm thinking my cheapish card (where I would compensate by setting the gamma lower) or the capture itself. I checked out a jpeg screenshot of a PC game btw, and got 0/1/20, but that might just be a source thing there.

Incidentally, the black in my avatar isn't really black either, but it is in single digits. This is some kind of Pandora's box apparently; I think maybe I'd rather be blissfully ignorant. WHAT IS REAL?! lol :P

I'll try to figure this out later maybe when I feel like it. Although of course I'd have to get around the fact that whatever you're used to will look normal, and anything else looks "wrong."

Sorry Ecco.

BlueGlass

Edit history:

BlueGlass: 2006-06-09 08:41:43 am

2006-06-09 08:41:14 am

Yep yep yep!

It's okay; not like there's anything for me to say in this topic, seeing as I'm still waiting for my nice pretty Genesis A/V cable to arrive so I can hook up the system to my DVD recorder and begin recording. In the meantime, I'm still practicing in between sessions of various other games so my Ecco skills stay fresh. I can conidently say that I've reached the point where luck will be the sole factor in the success of this run.

spineshark

Edit history:

spineshark: 2006-06-09 05:51:59 pm

2006-06-09 05:50:18 pm

新世紀進歩的羽扇子音楽

that's cool...but that means that you've gotten to the part where running will quickly start to really suck. Wink

unless you're much more patient than me, which is probably true because you beat this game and stuff.

i actually intend to eventually, but with my broken computer and the impossibility of buying a genesis (or perhaps not, because i did see a dreamcast the other day, along with some actually good genesis games ^_^) it probably will not even be by the time this run is finished. Sad

BlueGlass

Edit history:

BlueGlass: 2006-06-10 02:06:18 am

2006-06-09 11:10:53 pm

Yep yep yep!

If you haven''t beaten the game, might I reccomend not waching the run? Because it'll, like, spoil stuff and all that. Games aren't quite as fun when you already know what's coming next.

EDIT: Not ten minutes after I made this post, the cable arrived. Now that I'm actually recording, however, I'm making a lot more mistakes
(or possibly I'm being less lenient of the mistkes I was already making). Either way, I have now officially begun recording.

nate

2006-06-10 09:02:42 am

Quote:

This is some kind of Pandora's box apparently; I think maybe I'd rather be blissfully ignorant. WHAT IS REAL?!

welcome to my world.

Quote:

If you haven''t beaten the game, might I reccomend not waching the run? Because it'll, like, spoil stuff and all that. Games aren't quite as fun when you already know what's coming next.

EDIT: Not ten minutes after I made this post, the cable arrived. Now that I'm actually recording, however, I'm making a lot more mistakes
(or possibly I'm being less lenient of the mistkes I was already making). Either way, I have now officially begun recording.

excellent. hopefully (for your sake as well as ours) this will be the last leg of your journey. best of luck, and don't hesitate to rename this topic "the vents" if you need to do so when things start to humiliate you, as they always do in that game. Wink

VorpalEdge

2006-06-10 06:41:13 pm

welcome to the machine

Quote:

I'm making a lot more mistakes

Don't worry, this happens to everyone. :/

BlueGlass

2006-06-12 07:39:17 am

Yep yep yep!

One thing that I kept meaning to ask but repeatedly forgot about: that little swim-through-the-wall-after-returning-the-Asterite's-globe trick, is it allowed or not? I want to make absolutely certain, because it would be kind of stupid to finish my run and have it rejected because of a tiny trick that is used once and saves at most half a second. The problem is that Ecco will be completely inside the wall for a very short period of time, and I'm not sure wether that would be considered outside game boundaries or not. I mean, it's an area the game designers never expected anyone to be able to reach (without the aid of the handy-dandy debug menu, of course), but it's still inside the bounds of the level.

nate

2006-06-12 07:52:38 am

no, i think it's comparable to the marble garden zone trick in s3&k or to the melee animation trick in pso, meaning it's not hideous or ridiculous enough to warrant banning. we risk looking like tg if we ban every little questionable thing like that. an example of something that would be banned is if you found a way to go inside of a very large wall (say in the lagoon or something) and used that to skip the entire level without actually playing it at all like a normal person would expect you to play the game. another example would be the stuff you can do in mega man 2, if you've seen the tas.

basically, staying inside of the map is almost always going to be better than going outside of it (as you usually do in metroid prime series secret worlds), and going through a wall as a shortcut without being inside the wall for any extended period (more than perhaps two or three seconds) is almost always going to be better than going inside a wall and staying there while the viewer wonders wtf is going on.

how have you been doing in your runs?

no, i think it's comparable to the marble garden zone trick in s3&k or to the melee animation trick in pso, meaning it's not hideous or ridiculous enough to warrant banning. we risk looking like tg if we ban every little questionable thing like that. an example of something that would be banned is if you found a way to go inside of a very large wall (say in the lagoon or something) and used that to skip the entire level without actually playing it at all like a normal person would expect you to play the game. another example would be the stuff you can do in mega man 2, if you've seen the tas.

basically, staying inside of the map is almost always going to be better than going outside of it (as you usually do in metroid prime series secret worlds), and going through a wall as a shortcut without being inside the wall for any extended period (more than perhaps two or three seconds) is almost always going to be better than going inside a wall and staying there while the viewer wonders wtf is going on.

how have you been doing in your runs?

BlueGlass

2006-06-12 08:42:02 am

Yep yep yep!

I've had no chance to play the last two days, because yesterday my cousin came over so I could introduce him to Gunstar Heroes, and that evening I went with my mom and grandma to a movie, then I spent practically all of today with friends. So far, I haven't recorded a run that's made it past Hard Water (I HATE ICE CUBES!!!!!), but that's mostly because I'm restarting whenever I make a noticeable mistake before Ice Zone and restarting at any mistake before the start of Undercaves. This does not count losing fractions of a second by bumping against walls, but it does count things like messing up jumping over the islands on The Vents. For some reason those three islands cause me lots of problems.

Just to give you an idea of what to expect, here's my best pracice run times (from my 30:25 run) for the first few levels rounded to the nearest five seconds (from memory)

start Medusa Bay: 0:15
start Undercaves: 0:30
start The Vents: 1:25
start The Lagoon: 1:50
start Ridge Water: 3:45
start Open Ocean: 5:45
start Ice Zone: 6:30

Sorry I can't remember any more; I should've written them down. Oh well.

Tomorrow (and for the next couple weeks), I should have a lot more time to play, though.

I've had no chance to play the last two days, because yesterday my cousin came over so I could introduce him to Gunstar Heroes, and that evening I went with my mom and grandma to a movie, then I spent practically all of today with friends.  So far, I haven't recorded a run that's made it past Hard Water (I HATE ICE CUBES!!!!!), but that's mostly because I'm restarting whenever I make a noticeable mistake before Ice Zone and restarting at any mistake before the start of Undercaves.  This does not count losing fractions of a second by bumping against walls, but it does count things like messing up jumping over the islands on The Vents.  For some reason those three islands cause me lots of problems.

Just to give you an idea of what to expect, here's my best pracice run times (from my 30:25 run) for the first few levels rounded to the nearest five seconds (from memory)

start Medusa Bay:         0:15
start Undercaves:         0:30
start The Vents:           1:25
start The Lagoon:         1:50
start Ridge Water:        3:45
start Open Ocean:        5:45
start Ice Zone:             6:30

Sorry I can't remember any more; I should've written them down.  Oh well.

Tomorrow (and for the next couple weeks), I should have a lot more time to play, though.

nate

2006-06-12 11:40:31 am

ah yeah, the jumps at the start of the vents were one of the last things i did before i stopped my individual-level runs, so i remember that pretty well. specifically i remember thinking "damn i'm glad i don't have to do what i just did in an ss!"

well, good luck again, and let me know if you need anything. a cold beverage served european-style (no ice cubes), perhaps?

BlueGlass

2006-06-13 02:33:02 am

Yep yep yep!

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Vortex Queen just ate me. And that run would have been somewhere around a high 27 or low 28 (started the fight at 27:03).

After watching the recording, I probably wouldn't have kept it anway, because it wasn't that good of a run. I completely screwed up on The Library and Deep Cty, losing about 50 seonds on those two levels combined (I messed up pushing the block in Library and spent a full thirty seconds failing the jump at the start of Deep City).

Well, now I know what it's like to have a run ended by the final boss.

kareshi

Edit history:

kareshi: 2006-06-13 03:42:36 am

2006-06-13 03:40:50 am

I used to use the "infinite air" and "infinite water" cheats on this game, and if the big alien head at the end (is that the vortex queen?) eats you, you just stay in her mouth and can't die and scream forever. it really sucks.

And I know all about what it feels like trying to do a SS no-death run on a 25+ minute game and dying at the end. I sympathize, immensely.

Your game is probably harder, too. Good luck.

nate

2006-06-13 11:55:44 am

in ecco i think it's worse to have that happen because of the level that comes before. unless blueglass is just totally insane and never has problems in the machine, which i doubt. Tongue

BlueGlass

2006-06-13 05:48:51 pm

Yep yep yep!

Quote:

in ecco i think it's worse to have that happen because of the level that comes before. unless blueglass is just totally insane and never has problems in the machine, which i doubt. Tongue

Wait, are you saying that you didn't have to memorize the level to the point where it was permenantly ingrained in your mind in order to beat the game? Oh, I didn't mention this before, but the reason I spent thirty seconds messing up at the start of Deep City was becase I had decided to attempt to semi-copy the TAS. Think I'll go back to the normal way of doing that jump.

nate

2006-06-13 10:45:19 pm

nah, the last 1/4 of it i always winged. i guess it's highly unlikely you would die if you could keep your nerves under control if you knew all of it.

Enhasa

2006-06-14 05:46:56 am

everybody wanna tell you the meaning of music

Quote:

I've had no chance to play the last two days

Relax, there's no need to stress yourself over 2 days. How many years has it been since the game was released?

If nothing else, SDA teaches you patience. Wink

BlueGlass

2006-06-14 07:25:53 am

Yep yep yep!

Quote:

How many years has it been since the game was released?

15. Happy fifteenth birthday, Ecco! I'll be giving you your present sometime in the near future!

BlueGlass

2006-06-15 07:11:12 am

Yep yep yep!

Sorry about the double post, but I've just completed the run. The reason I'm not shouting my head off is that I made some very stupid mistakes. Finla time is 28:3X (don't remember the seconds and forgot to write it down, sorry), think it was closer to forty seconds than thirty. Basically, I messed up horribly in Island Zone and completely horrendsly in The Library, in addition to minor mistakes in some of the other levels.

I think I'll keep this, but keep trying, and if I don't manage to get a better time before Nate starts accepting runs again, I'll just send this one in and move on to other things (butI'll probably try again in a few months).

Does that sentence I just typed make sense? My mom had me take a sleeping pill to counteract my reent problem of staying up till four thirty every night and waking up at three the next day and it's definitely starting to take effect while I'm typing this because I'm typing slower than normal and am typing in a very repetitive and runon way. I think I might look over this post again in the morning when I'm awake.

Sorry about the double post, but I've just completed the run.  The reason I'm not shouting my head off is that I made some very stupid mistakes.  Finla time is 28:3X (don't remember the seconds and forgot to write it down, sorry), think it was closer to forty seconds than thirty.  Basically, I messed up horribly in Island Zone and completely horrendsly in The Library, in addition to minor mistakes in some of the other levels.

I think I'll keep this, but keep trying, and if I don't manage to get a better time before Nate starts accepting runs again, I'll just send this one in and move on to other things (butI'll probably try again in a few months).

Does that sentence I just typed make sense?  My mom had me take a sleeping pill to counteract my reent problem of staying up till four thirty every night and waking up at three the next day and it's definitely starting to take effect while I'm typing this because I'm typing slower than normal and am typing in a very repetitive and runon way.  I think I might look over this post again in the morning when I'm awake.

nate

Edit history:

nate: 2006-06-15 08:12:07 am

2006-06-15 08:11:51 am

congrats. the nature of this game is such that the mistakes are going to be more than minor unless you want to devote a pretty good chunk of your life to it. i agree that you should keep trying though. give it another two weeks and see what happens, and definitely don't drug yourself before playing. Wink

actually, about that, you might try doing vigorous exercise one or more times a day and see if that makes you more tired at night. this is one of those "do as i say, not as i do" things (i woke up at 1 am today after going to bed at 4 pm yesterday, then slept again from 12 pm to 5 pm ... yikes).

BlueGlass

Edit history:

BlueGlass: 2006-08-01 07:54:10 am

2006-06-19 02:11:48 am

Yep yep yep!

Unfortunately, I still don't have a good run completed yet, mostly because every attempt that makes it past Hard Water ends with stupid mistakes, horrible luck, or a combination of both. My reason for posting, though, is to say that I've decided to not send in my 28:31 run at all. Most of the run looks (and is) really bad.

nate

2006-06-19 02:33:34 pm

you'll get it. only a matter of time.

dessgeega

2006-06-22 02:33:43 am

i like to watch.

hard water is an ordeal. a single-segment sub-half-hour run is very impressive.

Uppity Negro

2006-07-06 11:37:02 pm

Wow, and here I thought I was a badass for having beaten hard water for the first time today. How are you doing all this? How is not dying at least every few minutes possible in this game?

To those who haven't played, I can't even begin to explain the unimaginable difficulty of Ecco; the dolphin's got no brakes, it takes a full second to turn around, you can't steer in a different direction than you're aiming your sonar... and the controls.... ughhh. You are incredible for being able to survive any portion of this game, and to do it in a time comparable to the TAS is just unthinkable. I'm curious to know what sort of "tricks" you're coming up with that weren't in the TAS.

Have you pretty much memorized the location of every enemy and every structural feature at this point? What do you do to keep ecco from wandering off in an inintended direction? About how many curse words do you use per minute while recording?

And are you going to try for no-damage like the TAS did? Wink

Just kidding.

Wow, and here I thought I was a badass for having beaten hard water for the first time today.  How are you doing all this?  How is not dying at least every few minutes possible in this game?

To those who haven't played, I can't even begin to explain the unimaginable difficulty of Ecco; the dolphin's got no brakes, it takes a full second to turn around, you can't steer in a different direction than you're aiming your sonar... and the controls.... ughhh.  You are incredible for being able to survive any portion of this game, and to do it in a time comparable to the TAS is just unthinkable.  I'm curious to know what sort of "tricks" you're coming up with that weren't in the TAS.

Have you pretty much memorized the location of every enemy and every structural feature at this point?  What do you do to keep ecco from wandering off in an inintended direction?  About how many curse words do you use per minute while recording?

And are you going to try for no-damage like the TAS did?   ;) Just kidding.