Secret of Evermore (SNES)

2014-02-27 04:33:04 pm

It's hard to compare lsnes/bsnes/snes9x for this, you can't just compare videos and say : a frame is missing here. Snes9x will always be slower (if you exclude lag comparaison for some game like megaman X2) because it "run" at 59.x hz and not 60.0x hz, aside from that..

For this fucking crash it's hard to prononce, we will need savestate with the same stuff in RAM and RNG value for each emulator. And the audio chipset is like standalone so it's something you can't really watch.

TheAngryPanda

2014-02-27 04:43:44 pm

Speed > Safety

There's no piss match, you're pretending there is. I genuinely don't give a damn about the trick itself. I have an issue with not rewarding risk (or hope, chance, luck, whatever you feel like calling it, same shit either way) in a SPEEDRUN, where it's completely about risk for maximum potential time gain regardless of what effects it has on the game or what the game may do about it.

Nobody is trying to say you can't have an opinion either, not like we could change it anyways and it wouldn't be worth the time.

All I care about is that if someone gets a WR on console with this skip, nobody gets the impression that it isn't a legit WR. That would be incredibly stupid and greatly disrespectful to that player.

Skarsnik

2014-02-27 04:53:44 pm

So is the 1:17:2x of crawek a new WR or not, to stay on the emulator issue?

For console, the skip worked on two runs already, So it's hard to say "it's not legit". But I really understand your concern meta, it's not something you can "control/prevent" (for now), like magmar not being kill by your cast (you could have cast more stuff, level up hardball more...)

MetaSigma

2014-02-27 05:02:24 pm

Evermore Extrodinare ᕦ(° Д°)ᕤ

The difference with that Skars is that it's within the RNG of the game itself. Not the RNG of...will the game just dump on itself randomly. That is my biggest thing with it. I "personally" don't like it just on the basis it's less about the skill of the gamer (That one trick) and more of, well the game just decided to quit. With literally no way of knowing how to prevent such a crash. I just don't like that idea is all. Again and now that I'm hearing more of the Evermore runners are ok with the trick, if it's in it's in. I'm not going to argue about the 1:17:2x, but again I just feel weird about it.

GreenAmbler

2014-02-27 05:04:40 pm

We use many glitches that can kill a run based on RNG, if in game randomness counts I don't see why other randomness factors would be different. It's not like we haven't used risky glitches we barely understood in speedruns before. The name of the SoE speedrun game has always been abuse the game as much as possible before it abuses you. And it does seem to be that it's not completely random, although there is very little confirmed at this time.

So ultimately I think we should focus more on testing now and worry about who has the record later, if someone wants to make a strong argument they should first do extensive testing on all platforms. If emulator does in fact have an advantage solely in success rate, I personally say still call the run a WR but with an asterisk.

DLDarklink

Edit history:

DLDarklink: 2014-02-27 06:08:55 pm

2014-02-27 06:07:53 pm

...

Quote from GreenAmbler:

So ultimately I think we should focus more on testing now and worry about who has the record later,

I totally agree with that, which also means people should still test this stuff. We only know the 'quick' Verm Skip works on console, yet we can only guess what's causing the sound to drop. We are almost sure it's due to certain sounds stacking or something perhaps something else.

I still hope the console runners are going to test this skip some more (starting from an act 2 savefile to save some time :P) and hopefully we can figure this stuff out Smiley

(and ofcourse the emulator runners, but I want to see some console action)

AsFarAsIGet

Edit history:

AsFarAsIGet: 2014-02-27 10:59:36 pm

AsFarAsIGet: 2014-02-27 08:47:07 pm

AsFarAsIGet: 2014-02-27 08:45:58 pm

2014-02-27 08:43:55 pm

www.youtube.com/user/HumanMYTH

The only concern I have about the trick is the separation of console and emulator runs! This causes definitely a problem... Would a WR time on emulator still be a WR time or not when you use that skip?! You can never tell how the console wouldve responded to it etc...

It should definitely be talked out for sure before it causes any kind of troubles.

TheAngryPanda

2014-02-28 12:13:26 am

Speed > Safety

I'm not quite sure what there is to talk about really...

It works on console, as proven by Darklink, multiple times even. There should be no separation or split in terms of Any% (which is pretty much all this applies to) because of the trick. It will be like other games with difficult/precise/"random"/whatever tricks in that some will use it, others will choose not to. I don't really see how we can say "Don't do that! It doesn't work!" anymore, because it does... albeit at the moment, on it's own terms. We'll figure it out eventually and then it will all be fine, so why not get people running it now if they choose to?

The only REAL question of legitimacy is if Bsnes actually ends up having a major conflict with the trick. And while Crawek has been pretty thorough in his testing, I'm holding out on what may be found out about it in the next few weeks before saying it does or doesn't work on that specific emulator. In regards to the other emulators, they should be perfectly fine to run/compete with so long as the accuracy isn't something like Zsnes.

I'm not quite sure what there is to talk about really...

It works on console, as proven by Darklink, multiple times even. There should be no separation or split in terms of Any% (which is pretty much all this applies to) because of the trick. It will be like other games with difficult/precise/"random"/whatever tricks in that some will use it, others will choose not to. I don't really see how we can say "Don't do that! It doesn't work!" anymore, because it does... albeit at the moment, on it's own terms. We'll figure it out eventually and then it will all be fine, so why not get people running it now if they choose to?

The only REAL question of legitimacy is if Bsnes actually ends up having a major conflict with the trick. And while Crawek has been pretty thorough in his testing, I'm holding out on what may be found out about it in the next few weeks before saying it does or doesn't work on that specific emulator. In regards to the other emulators, they should be perfectly fine to run/compete with so long as the accuracy isn't something like Zsnes.

AsFarAsIGet

Edit history:

AsFarAsIGet: 2014-02-28 01:48:57 am

AsFarAsIGet: 2014-02-28 01:48:36 am

AsFarAsIGet: 2014-02-28 01:46:49 am

2014-02-28 01:45:46 am

www.youtube.com/user/HumanMYTH

"The only REAL question of legitimacy is if Bsnes actually ends up having a major conflict with the trick."

Thats what there is to talk about. Lets just think some of the used emulators to speedrun soe DON'T crash on whatever u do to the game, which would make emulator runs (doing the verm skip) some sort of not legit. (since there might be no risk of crashing)

All I can say is that snes9x doesnt crash there. Not sure which emulators are speedrun confirmed tough.

TheAngryPanda

2014-02-28 02:11:36 am

Speed > Safety

Which is exactly why I said "I'm holding out on what may be found out about it in the next few weeks before saying it does or doesn't work on that specific emulator." The reason I brought Bsnes up is specifically to say that there's no point in saying it does or does not work on on it until we know how it works, so it's in a state of limbo at the moment, unfortunately... That being said, there are alternatives to this emulator, which run the game just fine, as evident by the numerous people who have used them to learn/practice the game on. Bsnes' issue that Crawek brought up is exactly WHY I was trying to get the TAS up to that point, but if we're just gonna throw the trick under the bridge, then I fail to see the point of me even bothering.

It's also worth mentioning that most tests done right now are from a save state or save point, which has a fairly high chance of changing things depending on whatever it may be that results in the softlock. Since we don't know this, we can't say for sure, but it's something to keep in mind.

My problem earlier is that it was implied that if someone were to ask what the WR was, the answer would not be correct because player A did Verm Skip and player B didn't, both being on the same platform. I have a serious problem with that.

Also, for those who aren't aware, it isn't a crash. It's a soft lock, the game continues to function and run in the background after the transition but runs into it's problem somewhere post-mapID change. The character positions also change post-transition, but are never visually recognized. A crash would be an immediate halt to literally everything. Being nitpicky here (and if I've made a mistake, someone correct it) so anyone who may be looking into this on a more detailed tech side won't be looking for wrong things.

Which is exactly why I said "I'm holding out on what may be found out about it in the next few weeks before saying it does or doesn't work on that specific emulator." The reason I brought Bsnes up is specifically to say that there's no point in saying it does or does not work on on it until we know how it works, so it's in a state of limbo at the moment, unfortunately... That being said, there are alternatives to this emulator, which run the game just fine, as evident by the numerous people who have used them to learn/practice the game on. Bsnes' issue that Crawek brought up is exactly WHY I was trying to get the TAS up to that point, but if we're just gonna throw the trick under the bridge, then I fail to see the point of me even bothering.

It's also worth mentioning that most tests done right now are from a save state or save point, which has a fairly high chance of changing things depending on whatever it may be that results in the softlock. Since we don't know this, we can't say for sure, but it's something to keep in mind.

My problem earlier is that it was implied that if someone were to ask what the WR was, the answer would not be correct because player A did Verm Skip and player B didn't, both being on the [b]same[/b] platform. I have a serious problem with that.

Also, for those who aren't aware, it isn't a crash. It's a soft lock, the game continues to function and run in the background after the transition but runs into it's problem somewhere post-mapID change. The character positions also change post-transition, but are never visually recognized. A crash would be an immediate halt to literally everything. Being nitpicky here (and if I've made a mistake, someone correct it) so anyone who may be looking into this on a more detailed tech side won't be looking for wrong things.

GreenAmbler

Edit history:

GreenAmbler: 2014-03-01 05:40:23 am

GreenAmbler: 2014-03-01 05:35:53 am

2014-03-01 05:31:33 am

Snes9x 1.53 is what my testing used, it can softlock but it is pretty unlikely in a run, you pretty much have to either let the raptors attack or hit them without killing them. I'm no expert on emulators so I could definitely be wrong, but my understanding is that Snes9x's performance is considered for basically all intents and purposes to be indistinguishable from console, but the way it actually functions is a bit different, which might only really matter in a situation like this where you're pushing the limitations of the system. whereas bsnes is designed to be the truest consoles experience there is, but requires a somewhat powerful computer. since my computer sucks and I don't have a console, I don't think there's much more I can test. I haven't seen too much console testing, but it seems to be much more consistent with crawek's bsnes testing than my snes9x testing.

Also, is there a place closer to the dungeon people can atlas glitch so they don't need to go all the way through act 2? Aren't there spiders in the ivory tower dungeon? Could save right after Banquet. at the very least, save it before finishing act 2 if you guys aren't already

Snes9x 1.53 is what my testing used, it can softlock but it is pretty unlikely in a run, you pretty much have to either let the raptors attack or hit them without killing them. I'm no expert on emulators so I could definitely be wrong, but my understanding is that Snes9x's performance is considered for basically all intents and purposes to be indistinguishable from console, but the way it actually functions is a bit different, which might only really matter in a situation like this where you're pushing the limitations of the system. whereas bsnes is designed to be the truest consoles experience there is, but requires a somewhat powerful computer. since my computer sucks and I don't have a console, I don't think there's much more I can test. I haven't seen too much console testing, but it seems to be much more consistent with crawek's bsnes testing than my snes9x testing.

Also, is there a place closer to the dungeon people can atlas glitch so they don't need to go all the way through act 2? Aren't there spiders in the ivory tower dungeon? Could save right after Banquet. at the very least, save it before finishing act 2 if you guys aren't already

TheAngryPanda

2014-03-01 08:08:54 am

Speed > Safety

The spiders in the forest can poison you, so you could Atlas Glitch there instead, but no invincibility. The point of doing it in Act 2 was to have the entirety of Act 3 involved, as well as Atlas Glitch, in case it was something related to those two.

As far as I know, if we're putting Verm Skip in, the current record uses Snes9x. Not sure of what version.

AsFarAsIGet

2014-03-01 09:29:51 am

www.youtube.com/user/HumanMYTH

Has the current record, which was played on Snes9x, the verminator skip in it?

TheAngryPanda

Edit history:

TheAngryPanda: 2014-03-01 12:56:45 pm

2014-03-01 12:53:41 pm

Speed > Safety

So this is pretty much my final "outlook" on the Verm Skip issue at hand.

1) I think it definitely should be allowed because it's been proven to work on consoles. Ultimately, that's all that matters in regards to submission on this site, which is arguably the goal of just about any runner here. I'm sure if Crawek had a console and NTSC copy of SoE, he'd be up for submissions as well.

2) If Bsnes ultimately is decided to have an issue with this trick, then Snes9x 1.53 or whatever version is MOST accurate should be used in it's place. Or Higan/Bizhawk assuming there's any sort of difference there, although since they're basically built from the same thing (to my knowledge at least) I don't think this will be an issue.

3) Because the trick has various unknown qualities to it, we cannot accurately say HOW or WHY things are done in it, and as such, there's no way to prove/disprove anything does or doesn't work unless it's blatantly obvious. There are tons of very good theories out there about what does and doesn't cause the soft lock, none of them have been extensively tested but they should ALL be looked at in great detail, either through highlighted material provided by testers or by self-testing under the same circumstances on your own emulator/console. Crawek's theory of causing sound to alter effects during the transition is something we should seriously look into. The same could be said of Darklink's mentioning that the energy meter "beep" sound has odd issues when activating during certain events. On top of this, there's also the menu operations that delay the effects of things and let the game play through it's glitched sound processes. Does any of this mean we shouldn't use the trick for any reason at all? Hell no, it saves a TON of time at this point, and we'd be hurting ourselves NOT to use it. Consider failed attempts testing material, rewatch the VoD of it and see what was different from something that worked.

4) The trick is not random. I'd have a hard time believing a game randomly soft locks for no reason. So this tells me that this trick is player-controlled in some manner, we just don't know it yet. That means that because it's not just some random soft lock, there's really no reason not to include it. Remember when we thought Vigor was a soft lock that was random? Then you guys spent a few days testing and figured out it was simply just a matter of waiting a brief moment, now it's something nobody even thinks twice about anymore. Why is this any different? It isn't.

That's basically how I feel about this trick. I feel as if we're trying to force safety onto an already extremely volatile game, when all that accomplishes at the end of the day is nothing more than the "What if?" feeling regarding this trick, and other qualities of running the game. Why not just bite the bullet and go for the satisfaction of knowing you've literally crushed the game by utilizing all known things within it at that time.

So this is pretty much my final "outlook" on the Verm Skip issue at hand.

1) I think it definitely should be allowed because it's been proven to work on consoles. Ultimately, that's all that matters in regards to submission on this site, which is arguably the goal of just about any runner here. I'm sure if Crawek had a console and NTSC copy of SoE, he'd be up for submissions as well.

2) If Bsnes ultimately is decided to have an issue with this trick, then Snes9x 1.53 or whatever version is MOST accurate should be used in it's place. Or Higan/Bizhawk assuming there's any sort of difference there, although since they're basically built from the same thing (to my knowledge at least) I don't think this will be an issue.

3) Because the trick has various unknown qualities to it, we cannot accurately say HOW or WHY things are done in it, and as such, there's no way to prove/disprove anything does or doesn't work unless it's blatantly obvious. There are tons of very good theories out there about what does and doesn't cause the soft lock, none of them have been extensively tested but they should ALL be looked at in great detail, either through highlighted material provided by testers or by self-testing under the same circumstances on your own emulator/console. Crawek's theory of causing sound to alter effects during the transition is something we should seriously look into. The same could be said of Darklink's mentioning that the energy meter "beep" sound has odd issues when activating during certain events. On top of this, there's also the menu operations that delay the effects of things and let the game play through it's glitched sound processes. Does any of this mean we shouldn't use the trick for any reason at all? Hell no, it saves a TON of time at this point, and we'd be hurting ourselves NOT to use it. Consider failed attempts testing material, rewatch the VoD of it and see what was different from something that worked.

4) The trick is not random. I'd have a hard time believing a game randomly soft locks for no reason. So this tells me that this trick is player-controlled in some manner, we just don't know it yet. That means that because it's not just some random soft lock, there's really no reason not to include it. Remember when we thought Vigor was a soft lock that was random? Then you guys spent a few days testing and figured out it was simply just a matter of waiting a brief moment, now it's something nobody even thinks twice about anymore. Why is this any different? It isn't.

That's basically how I feel about this trick. I feel as if we're trying to force safety onto an already extremely volatile game, when all that accomplishes at the end of the day is nothing more than the "What if?" feeling regarding this trick, and other qualities of running the game. Why not just bite the bullet and go for the satisfaction of knowing you've literally crushed the game by utilizing all known things within it at that time.

DLDarklink

2014-03-01 01:35:51 pm

...

By all means, include the skip in your runs guys. Crashes can't be random, it's like Panda said: we just don't know what is causing it yet.

Just go and practice it and try getting it consistent (in whatever way we can get/call it consistent). If the music drops and the games crashes: reset and try again. This can be really infuriating, but so does act 1 and 2 Wink

Right now this trick is easier than BBM Skip and no Defend and it saves over 1 minute! At some point we (or at least the top tier runners) will need to pull out every known trick to get WR, there won't be any reason left to not do all the harder tricks and safestrats.

At a certain point we'll find out what is causing the music to drop and we'll find a way to work with it Smiley

So, please, just go with it!

Vultuz

Edit history:

Vultuz: 2014-03-06 09:13:09 am

Vultuz: 2014-03-06 09:12:20 am

2014-03-06 09:12:07 am

I proofed that Emulators have not an unfair advantage on Verminator Skip Tongue

Prepare for the Bugging Sound

http://www.twitch.tv/vultuz/c/3837407

DLDarklink

2014-03-06 01:02:04 pm

...

cool

which emulator (and version) were you using?

Vultuz

Edit history:

Vultuz: 2014-03-06 06:08:30 pm

2014-03-06 06:07:43 pm

Well thats wasn't that great, that cost me a PB Tongue

I'am using SNES 9x v1.53
I think the Crash had to do something with the Raptor dodged my attack, atleast after that the Sound messed up even more and i got this clicking sound which slowed the game down at the end

GreenAmbler

Edit history:

GreenAmbler: 2014-03-08 04:47:37 pm

2014-03-07 02:50:38 am

That is consistent with my testing, I wouldn't say it proves that emulator has no advantage. Basically those raptors are like the only thing that seems to softlock the game on Snes9x (1.53) from my experience, which to my knowledge is not how the console (as well as bsnes) responds to the area. I believe yours softlocked because the raptor got an attack off, which is one of the two sounds I found to trigger the softlock (the other being hitting the raptor without killing it) even though other sounds are noticeably glitched. I believe you could have saved this run by letting the raptor sound play out for another 5-10 seconds or so to finish before doing anything else — bringing up the menu ring immediately seems like the safest way to do so since the menu sounds don't seem to affect the area.

But yeah, it will take a lot more testing to prove that emulators have no advantage — specifically console testing, which will be quite tedious. I feel like I have a decent understanding of how Snes9x handles the area, although I've only really tested savestates from the previous room so there could still be another factor I'm overlooking.

That is consistent with my testing, I wouldn't say it proves that emulator has no advantage. Basically those raptors are like the only thing that seems to softlock the game on Snes9x (1.53) from my experience, which to my knowledge is not how the console (as well as bsnes) responds to the area. I believe yours softlocked because the raptor got an attack off, which is one of the two sounds I found to trigger the softlock (the other being hitting the raptor without killing it) even though other sounds are noticeably glitched. I believe you could have saved this run by letting the raptor sound play out for another 5-10 seconds or so to finish before doing anything else — bringing up the menu ring immediately seems like the safest way to do so since the menu sounds don't seem to affect the area.

But yeah, it will take a lot more testing to prove that emulators have no advantage — specifically console testing, which will be quite tedious. I feel like I have a decent understanding of how Snes9x handles the area, although I've only really tested savestates from the previous room so there could still be another factor I'm overlooking.

Grumly

2014-03-08 12:40:25 pm

I think there is a way to say if a glitch is legit or not.

What do you think of playing TAS' inputs on a real console by a robot like AGDQ's Super Mario World run () ?

The fact is that we don't know how the glitch works for now. I think the question of what is legit or not becomes useless when a working set-up will be found.

Skarsnik

2014-03-09 12:13:01 pm

That will probably not work. In a game when the RNG is changed depending on input and frame advance, this will desync on the first second of gameplay Smiley

And if an emulator was acurate enought for that to not happen, we wouldn't need a console at the first place to test that Smiley

Omnigamer

2014-03-09 01:04:06 pm

All the things

Quote from Skarsnik:

That will probably not work. In a game when the RNG is changed depending on input and frame advance, this will desync on the first second of gameplay Smiley

The RNG doesn't advance during lag frames etc, so it will work the same as any other game that's been console-verified. BizHawk and lsnes are accurate enough that you shouldn't have to worry much about discrepancies anymore in that regard.

I second Grumly's statement. Every glitch happens for a reason. Figuring out those reasons can be a pain, but it's far from an impossible task.

Skarsnik

2014-04-05 11:19:01 am

Ok, I manage to crash after the jail with the verminator skip
(don't put the volume too hight)
http://www.twitch.tv/skarsnikus/b/517272061?t=2h41m50s

GreenAmbler

2014-04-06 05:03:20 am

Hmm well that's interesting, this contradicts most of my theories. This was on emulator? If so, which one? Was there anything unique or strange about the run otherwise?

MetaSigma

2014-04-06 07:20:54 am

Evermore Extrodinare ᕦ(° Д°)ᕤ

It looked like you should have crashed in the jail from what I was noticing. It appeared you were having the stutter associated with the crash, at least from what I could see. Still that is interesting.