Well, to actually answer your questions, since I don't think anyone else actually has... ^^;
Originally posted by SuperAgentYoshi1. How do I turn frame advance off after I turn it back on?
As mentioned, if you're using ZSNES, you don't have this option available to you.
In
Snes9x (I recommend 1.51, or, if you don't care about TASVideos, 1.43), go to "Config > Hotkeys", change the dropdown to "speed", and you can set the key for frame advance (I recommend something easy to reach). To turn frame advance on, just press that key; every time you press that key, it'll advance a frame, and holding it down will play the game at 50% speed. If you want to turn it off, just go to "File > Pause" and the game will go back to normal speed.
Alternatively to Snes9x are two more accurate emulators, lsnes and Bizhawk, and if you want to submit to TASVideos at some point,
you'll want to use one of these. In
lsnes, it's pretty much the exact same place; "Configure > Hotkeys", change to speed, "advance frame" key. To unpause, go to "System > Pause/Unpause". Annoyingly, though, when holding it down, the game advances at 100% speed.
In
Bizhawk, go to "Config > Hotkeys", but this time frame advance is the very first button in the list. To unpause, it's in "Emulation > Pause". Like lsnes, the game will advance at 100% speed when frame advance is held down.
Originally posted by SuperAgentYoshi2. What tools (Cheats?) do I need on?
First of all, there are no "cheats" that TASing uses. If you actually used cheats at any time, your run would be basically disqualified, same rules as real-time speedrunning.
There are a good number of tools that people use to help, though. First, the most basic is the
RAM watch; it's basically in the same place for every emulator, go to "Tools > RAM Watch" (or "Edit memory watch..." in lsnes). There, you can add any RAM address from
the RAM map, and the game will tell you what that address contains on any frame. I recommend, as a start, picking some addresses from
this list. You only need to care about the address, the data type, whether it's signed, and its description (of course).
In addition to RAM watch, there's also a helpful tool known as
Lua scripting to display information visually on the screen. Thankfully, you don't need to know how to code to use these; when you have a lua script, simply go to "File > Lua Scripting > New Lua Script Window..." (Snes9x), "Tools > Lua Console" (Bizhawk), or "Tools > Run Lua script..." (lsnes) and load a .lua file. If everything worked right, it should start displaying information on screen. A few scripts I recommend trying are
SMWUtils, which displays various pieces of information (most importantly sprite data and slots), and
smwblockinfo, which will provide clipping values and will tell you when you can perform certain glitches such as walljumping, corner clipping, or block duplication.
Thirdly, there's the
macro editor, which is pretty easy to explain, but is unfortunately only included with Snes9x as of right now (for other emulators, you'll have to write a Lua script). To use it, go to "Tools > Input Macro Editor..." and a window will pop up. Simply type a string of key presses into the boxes here (see lazymacro.txt that comes with Snes9x for syntax), choose the "overwrite" input mode, and check the box next to the controller. When you do that, the emulator will automatically press keys in the pattern you put in. It's useful for speed saving tricks such as 6/5 or 1/1 in SMW.
Finally, there's the
TAS editor, which *can* be downloaded
here. This isn't really used too often as far as Snes9x is concerned, since the only time you'll use it is for splicing two movies together or editing movie information. However, in both Bizhawk and lsnes, this handy tool is included within the emulator... and can be used
while an input movie is running. It's located at "Tools > TAStudio" (Bizhawk) or "Tools > Edit movie..." (lsnes). In Bizhawk, you simply play your input movie back and press keys as its playing to layer your input. In lsnes, you click on the input button on any frame to turn it on. While this doesn't seem particularly useful, it can let you take time to optimize a movie and then work on making it entertaining later.
Originally posted by SuperAgentYoshi3. What's a good method of walljumping?
Well, there's the lua script I mentioned earlier, which will tell you when you're at a speed when you can walljump off of whatever block you click on. If you don't want to do that, it basically amounts to running into a wall a few times until you manage to get it to work.
As ShadowDragon mentioned, though, becoming a TASer isn't particularly easy. It's a lot of trial and error, it takes patience, and it takes a good deal of experience before you really start to get used to doing it. I personally recommend starting out with a normal hack or just plain old SMW rather than a pit hack to help you get acquainted with the tools, since using something easy will let you experiment a little with what you can do. I also recommend checking
this page for a few tips and tricks when it comes to running SMW (if you're planning on another game, though, you may have to figure things out on your own if TASVideos doesn't have a resource page for it). Once you learn the ropes to making a TAS, it isn't particularly difficult to start making really good ones; just remember that patience is a virtue, especially when it coming to something like this, and be sure to test any ideas you have.
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