And if and when I probe TGM3 to test for similar behaviour, testing on actual hardware in real time, is it still a TAS? It didn't take an emulator for me to reverse engineer TGM3's grading system, or TGM3's scoring system, or Tetris Attack's precise gameplay physics. In my opinion TAS'es get way overglorified. Before TAS'ers existed, people still picked games apart. Just ask Pabs who runs tetrisattack.net, who used to record games on VHS tapes with his friend Greg and pick things apart until 2 completely non-obvious, unintended scoring behaviours (bugs) were revealed and shaped the way the game was played immensely. Hell, the same thing happened in Japan with a different scoring bug. Or even ask Jago, who went to arcades in the 90s and reverse engineered Killer Instinct's combo system to a fine degree. I don't think it's fair to pretend only TAS'ers are capable of this. In fact, for Tetris Attack in particular, until recently all TAS'es used hugely suboptimal strategy. It took a Japanese player named Tumori (one of the better players) to make a TAS that was truly tight.
Er, ct, you're missing a huge point. It's a hell of a lot easier to figure out precisely what's going on with a TAS. Sure, you can do the same thing without, but one way is going to be a lot faster and more accurate (more easily verifiable, etc.). People did precision calculations long before computers, but I'm not going to be approximating integrals to ten places with pencil and paper any time soon.
Air Gear - the point is that a TAS for some games will be always be suboptimal unless the player is well versed in the gameplay. Tetris Attack is an excellent example of this and I believe TAP will be too if it is ever attempted.
As I understand this topic so far, there's one faction that knows TAP well but doesn't TAS, and there's another faction that knows TAS well but is inexperienced at TAP. Competition between the two factions would lead the TASers to understand TAP better: if the best real-time play matches or surpasses the best TAS, the TASer will be forced to learn more subtleties to program them into his search bot in order to keep the TAS camp ahead of the best real-time players.
well i've never done a TAS, nor do i have any idea how to, but if someone has a version of the software that will work, i'd be glad to put in the effort.
You'd need a robot to TAS the game. Simply put the error that prevents you from scoring back to back tetrises may be a few HUNDRED pieces back. Or there may in fact be no way to avoid it. Or it may be a combination of multiple errors which aren't obvious until it's too late. To TAS it the following must be done. 1) start the game at the soonest possible moment with an ideal sequence that allows for B2B tetrises exclusively. 2) figure out the play sequence, possbily giving up and restarting many many times until you finally get a solvable sequence. It gets even worse in TGM3, where we have hold to worry about.
TGM3 is a lot easier. You have floorkicks and a hold, which mean that it's a lot easier to stack without ever leaving a hole if you have unlimited piece previews. You can also hold I-pieces, so you don't have to worry as much about clearing lines when you come to the section boundaries. I reckon I could play TAP and be able to near enough stack without holes given the chance to go back and alter my piece placements. If I could find a version of Mame with no input/rendering lag, I'd quite happily do it, because I don't reckon it would take that long.
I reckon it's much more complicated than just not breaking back to back tetrises. You have to also choose placements that save as many frames as possible. The hardest part is in choosing frame efficient placements that do not hinder, or rather, that do maximizes the frame efficiency of future placements. With the hold feature in the mix, you have yet another factor to consider.
Well, I think that maximal finesse is the key point to it being as fast as possible. I don't think the frame efficiency of future placements would matter that much though. Wallkicks perhaps, I can't see that much else to it.
In fact, a TAS will not be much faster thn existing superplays. SUre you can shave a frame or two by abusing the DAS and frame tapping, but the control scheme already allows for very fast actions to be humanly possible. That's why the game is pontless to TAS. Every advanced technique is possible without TASing, thanks to IRS, lock delay, and ARE.
i'd agree that a TAS wouldn't be much faster. what i'm interested in is seeing if 100% tetrises can be achieved. and let's keep in mind that just about any crazy zangi-move could be achieved before lockdown in a TAS even after level 500 in death, making things a bit simpler for a TASer without a lot of TGM 20G stacking experience. synchro moves would also be no problem, as tepples mentioned. isn't death mode hard because we play it at full speed?
That, plus because bad moves aren't reversible. It takes time for people to build up 20G stacking skills even with Lockjaw set to Death + Arika + no floor kicks + 2 second lock delay. But with a computer that can quickly try moves and and take them back, I envision that it might be possible to improve on a superplay video.
I disagree. Saving at least 1 frame off of every tetromino placement will already make around an 11 seconds difference in a game where 714 tetrominos are used and 71 tetrises and a single are made. I would imagine a TAS could save more than 1 frame.
you're all crazy. a good tas would slaughter existing records, master or death. what was the best "average active frames per tetromino" for jago's old tgm game? maybe around 14 or 15? with a tas this should be no more than around 5 on average. and that 14/15 number is from TGM1, which had a huge ARE. so a good player's average active frames should be MUCH larger for TAP. then you save a lot of frames by making tetrises. then you save more frames because you didn't need to think about fixing mistakes. you're all just plain crazy. sorry.
It counted the average number of active frames where nothing moved. And good players stay well below 10 wasted frames per piece. At best, a TAS of, say, TGM1 would be 10 seconds faster than the world record.
so say you take a really good player who wastes 4 frames per piece. he plays a full game of 256 lines (arbitrary). (256*2.5*4)/60=43. His game is at least 43 seconds slower than an optimized TAS.
Oops, yeah I missed a step in my calculation there. I calculated it as if players waste only a single frame per piece. Roughly, you can multiply ATP by 10 to get the maximum number of seconds you could shave off a 999 time.
But would it beany more entertaining? The non TASing expert would probably place the pieces the same way, or at least very close to it. That's the main issue. TASing this game does not let you do things no mortal can. it just lets you do them a lil quicker.
