Anybody considered a TAS?

[Wulf2k]

https://tasvideos.org/WelcomeToTASVideos.html

 

Dosbox supports re-recording nowadays, so I was wondering if anybody here had ever considered TASing any of the X-Coms. Some of the technical knowledge you guys have would mean you could show off some pretty interesting ways of beating it, if you had full re-recording capabilities and knowledge of how it handles the RNG.

[Pete]

Looking at it, I woulodn't say it'simpossible, but more suited to arcade games.

 

I think it would take many months or years to do a complete X-COM game from start to finish in this fashion, and in theory you wouldn't ever see anyone die so where would be the fun in that?

 

Plus there would be many boring bits as you watch playback of the Geoscape spinning if you covered the game from start to end.

 

Just my thoughts.

 

Recording missions though to show off different skills however is a nice idea and has been done a few times I think as there have been videos of gameplay on YouTube (some FAR better than others >:]).

[Wulf2k]

Granted, the arcade games are flashier, but I think it could be pretty amazing on a more subtle level for anybody familiar with the game.

 

I mean, there's the "cheating without exactly cheating" method of playing, where you get the perfect amount of scientists to research things at exactly the perfect rate, and manipulate exactly the perfect alien captures, etc, to beat Cydonia the quickest. Have the minimum number of guys with pistols take the minimum number of turns to take out superior forces. The time watching the Geoscape would be nonexistent because you could do it at 24 hour speed. This run would be more for finding out the theoretical "perfect game".

 

Or you could go for the "anti-perfect game" run. See how badly you can send your men to the slaughter, yet still win each battle with a single man alive at the end holding a stun gun. Or have him knocked unconscious with a grenade that kills the last enemy. Whatever.

 

Anyway, just throwing those out there. I know those aren't the most interesting things that can be done, but I also know there are others out there that are far more creative than I. Seeing all the various glitches and tricks pulled together into some sort of perfectly controlled showcase run, whatever the objective, would be pretty neat.

 

Er, I thought I was on the EU board, so ignore the Cydonia reference, but the same idea applies =]

[Pete]

The problem with the perfect amount of scientists is that there's a random modifier on how long it will take to research a given topic, so it won't be the same every time.

 

Similarly, if you reload a lot (like I did in the early years) you'll see that aliens can miss one time and hit the next, but I guess that's the aim of TAS.

 

I dunno, it would be nice to see just how quick you can do it - 4 months of game time is my record - but compress that down into a 5 minute video >:]

[Wulf2k]

The problem with the perfect amount of scientists is that there's a random modifier on how long it will take to research a given topic, so it won't be the same every time.

With a TAS, that's controllable. Figure out when/how it checks the random number generator, then just start your research 2 frames later or whatever affects it, so it picks the optimal research timer.

 

A dirty TAS could be done pretty quickly (quickly wouldn't get you perfect, but 'perfect enough') I think. Figure out your goals, play it loose, and just re-record around the actions that really matter. If you want a certain UFO to spawn, figure out what needs to be done differently to affect that, reload and retry till you get the right one. If you're fighting an alien and get shot, reload the state, wait another frame, retry, etc. It's like abusing save games with less hassle, with the main difference being that the random number generator will always give the same result for the same actions on the same frame.

 

Now, I've seen a few people here talking about the underlying mechanics/memory/programming etc. So I imagine with what they know, they could manipulate that to show off some of the more amazing aspects of the gameplay.

[Bomb Bloke]

I think this sort of thing would be more suited to Apocalypse, which can be played in RT mode. In TB, the only real benefit to save-scumming is to get the RNG to spit out the numbers you want. I mean, granted, it lets you push buttons very quickly and with great accuracy, while skipping those periods where you contemplate your next move, but in terms of "tactics" and stuff it doesn't help at all.

 

Apoc also has a much more complicated tech tree, which forces you to fight many missions in many places with technology that slowly ramps up as the game goes on.

 

In UFO, you can literally harvest everything you need to win the game in one single mission (along with every single weapon needed for research purposes, with a little luck), after that, it's just a matter of "grinding" through random battles in order to earn the cash needed to pay for the research/manufactoring, while keeping your score above 0 each month.

 

That is to say, you could do a fairly fast speed run that way, sure, but it probably wouldn't be all that interesting to watch in terms of tricks and skill.

 

"Oh look, the alien missed at point-blank-range... again... wonder how many reloads THAT took..."

[Wulf2k]

"Oh look, the alien missed at point-blank-range... again... wonder how many reloads THAT took..."

True, which is why the speedrunning is almost incidental to what I'd hope to see.

 

I dunno, maybe I'm hoping there's more to the game engine than there is, but reading some of the old threads about the underlying mechanics of the game made me think that there'd be some neat things to show. Like shooting through things that look solid, or getting hit by 20 bullets but taking 0 damage due to the low damage rolls, etc.

 

Maybe a run showing everything from https://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=Exploits

 

Re-reading the exploits section, I'm not seeing much that would actually translate well to watching, especially if you didn't already know what was going on.

 

Ah well, it was just a random idea.