Quote:
Originally Posted by RonMexico
Chris, that's interesting re: game "seeded" on controller input. I had no idea it worked that way. So I suppose every game should start out exactly the same up if you hold right on the joystick, up until the point where you first either (1) jump or (2) cease holding right on the joystick?
The only snag there is that inserting a coin counts as input, thus branching the seed, as does pressing the one player button. Trying to time both of those exactly would be impossible of course because of the speed at which the RNG cycles.
However, you CAN do what you're talking about using MAME save-states (which take a snapshot of the game's internal memory).
If you make a save-state somewhere in the game, observe the obstacles (fireballs, barrels, whatever), then re-start from your save state, they'll do exactly what they just did, as long as you don't touch the controls.
If you hold "up," or "left," or whatever on your input device and then start from your save state, they'll do something different, and that will be consistent too if the input is consistent. For practical purposes of course, the only way to be consistent is to start from the save-state with your hand already on the input (unless of course you think you can sync yourself to an RNG that's cycling hundreds of times a second). It's fun to do though. It's like the movie Groundhog Day. "Barrel goes down ladder... fireball walks left for a second, then right... Kong sneers," etc. The second you do something different, it changes.
This is getting pretty nerdy.
Last edited by Omaha Chris; 11-24-2012 at 07:48 PM.