For years now, AGDQ [Awesome Games Done Quick] has featured a block where TASBot (the Tool-Assisted Speedrun Robot) performs literally superhuman feats on classic consoles simply by sending data through the controller ports thousands of times per second. This year's block (viewable above) started off simply enough, with some show-offy perfect play of Galaga and Gradius on the new NES Classic hardware using a device made by TASBot team member Peter Greenwood (who goes by the name micro500). TASBot organizer dwangoAC Allan Cecil (dwangoAC) described the NES Classic as "absolutely horrible" when it comes to automation.
After that, TASBot moved on to a few "total control runs," exploiting known glitches in Super Mario Bros. 3 and Mega Man to insert arbitrary code on the NES. This is nothing new for the computer-driven TASBot—the basics of the tricks vary by game, but they generally involve using buffer overflows to get into memory, then bootstrapping a loader that starts reading and executing a stream of controller inputs as raw assembly level opcodes. The method was taken to ridiculous extremes last year, when TASbot managed to "beat" Super Mario Bros. 3 in less than a second with a very specific total control glitch.
With those out of the way, TASBot moved on to a similar total control run of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. After a few minutes of setup, the Zelda screen faded out, then faded back in on a bordered window with an ersatz logo for the "Super N64." Without any forthcoming explanation from the runners on stage, TASBot started apparently playing through a glitch-filled speedrun of Super Mario 64 on the Super NES, following it up with a similar glitch-filled speedrun through Valve's PC classic Portal. After that, the scene somehow transitioned to a Skype video call with a number of speedrunners speaking live from the AGDQ event through the SNES.
No one on the AGDQ stage acknowledged how weird this all was, leaving hundreds in the Herndon, VA ballroom and nearly 200,000 people watching live on Twitch temporarily guessing at what, exactly, was going on.
Very geeky but very cool. And totally impractical.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:19PM
Their demo went horribly wrong but they came out of it saying "uh, yeah, it was supposed to do that"!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @12:23AM
Given your comment, I assume you didn't actually watch the video or really know anything you are talking about. That's okay, this is SN, nobody RTFA, just admit it.
Their demo went mostly right. There were a few problems (I think they couldn't get their transmission audio to work correctly in their Skype-like video conferencing program). Overall, though, it worked.
I will echo the sentiment of the summary that the presentation left a bit to be desired. It is one thing to have a 10-second joke of, "what happened?" Their presentation went on for some 15 (?) minutes with no explanation what was going on. I actually thought it was a pre-recorded video they live-coded into the system for a long time. It might have been fun for the presenters, but it wasn't exceptionally informative for the viewers until the very end. This is in distinct contrast with their previous demonstrations which were both fun and informative.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @12:52AM
Plus, for people who watch speedruns and TASes, it wasn't very fun either. Once you get to the point of ACE (plus what they did last year of completely reprogramming an SNES using one), then it isn't really impressive when you ACE it so that it does something else. They just need to go back to basics and either use the capabilities of TAS to do impossible things in real time (like their brain games one), require insane reflexes, (like the Lost Vikings or others where multiple characters share a controller) or insanely lucky ones (like the monopoly TAS).
(Score: 5, Informative) by ikanreed on Friday January 20 2017, @12:20AM
And leave out any technical explanation:
Short version is that they used the 2 SNES controllers as an extremely small pipe for ultra-compressed video data(no audio, which was piped generated through an NES instead), and the code of the game was buffer-overflow rewritten to basically act as one giant-ass codec, abusing the 4 background layers of the console as a cheap way to do some of the decompression work.
The games (portal and M64) weren't actually played through the SNES, just video of existing playthroughs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @12:27AM
Are you sure the games weren't played? I got the impression the games were emulated and played within the game. I guess this goes back to the comment that this presentation was exceptionally non-informative, as compared to the previous TAS blocks.
Also, while this was a technically impressive feat, I can't help but feel that it wasn't very informative. As they noted, the NES Classic is basically a Linux computer, so all they did was find a security hole and exploit it to "pwn" the machine. It is one thing to do this on old game hardware, but doing it to a full computer is done all the time. Calling back to previous GDQ stunts, "getting Twitch to work on a computer is trivial, getting Twitch to work on a SNES (?) is impressive."
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @12:39AM
It definitely wasn't running the game code/datafiles off the SNES. Managing to pump the video data for even 180-240i through the controller interfaces to display on the screen would still be pretty badass though.
(Score: 1) by charon on Friday January 20 2017, @06:40AM
You mean I should put the entire text of the source article as the summary next time? If you are not interested in the topic, why comment? If you are interested in the topic, why not read the source which answers your questions?
Reading it again, the explanation is in the summary. What are you even bitching about?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 20 2017, @03:31AM
Owning old video games at an epic level... the way computer geeks with poor hand-eye coordination enjoy wasting their time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @02:50PM
Well, that, and masturbation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 20 2017, @08:12PM
The confusing part to us old-timers is wondering why anyone seriously bothers with Twitch.
"What, me do stuff? No, I'll just watch a stream of someone else doing stuff, thanks. No, television would achieve the same purpose if anyone else were stupid enough to try and market that as mainstream programming, and Twitch and the streamers would die if they were forced to be broadcasting providers in the FCC sense. But look at my 733T hipness because *I* watch Twitch!"
Sorry for the hate. But it is deserved. Now go do something useful and I'll do the same, thanks.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 21 2017, @10:53AM
Yes, a television would serve the same purpose, and lots of people watch television. The difference being the content isn't what you'd normally find on television. Does anyone really consider themselves 1337 because they watch Twitch, of course not that's just a stupid strawman you've built so you have another thing to bitch about.
What you really need is some perspective and empathy for others.