LBA Tool Assisted Speedrun (TAS)

[gravel22]

I'm creating this topic after a long day of multiple attempts at TASing LBA. We'll log every attempts here with detailed informations. Most results gave nothing to work with but we would like you to try on your side. The list starts with the most promising options to the worst one available. Feel free to contribute and reply on this thread, any help would be extremely appreciated as we really want to TAS this game. Thank you to everyone who's trying to make it possible.

Hourglass Download

EDIT: The crashing was due to me using a bad iso dump of my lba cd. I just got a good rip of it and now the game runs on Hourglass. The only problem now is desync while playing back the recorded movies which makes the whole TAS impossible to realize unfortunately. My skills of trying stops here, Zebra is on the question and he'll try more soon.

EDIT: Many thanks to Zebrazilla who got it to launch, unfortunately the game keeps crashing and crashing again*. We're almost there we would need someone to debug, fix and recompile an LBA fixed version for Hourglass. To launch LBA install LBAWin (you can do this with gog.com version). Set fps to 500 value. Set Message Sync Mode to Unchecked, so that it uses native OS messaging. This is probably due to LBAWin being Direct X 5 and quite quite deprecated, so it doesn't hook up to the OS messages in the right way. I guess it can create the window context but then cannot fill it with video or whatever. All tests have been made in a WinXP VM.

Hourglass is a Win32 TAS emulator project that been abandoned in late 2011. In my opinion it was the most promising software out there which open the game and record everything in the chosen frame per second. Lots of TAS options, slow, frame skipping, savestates, etc. Again tried in both WinXP and Win7 VM. I've tried with the GOG version and with LBAWin and both doesn't work. I've been able to hear the sound with WinXP with LBAWin, but no image no matter the ton of options I tried. This software still looks like it's the most promising for an eventual LBA TAS. It even have a log so someone with some knowledge could help us to make it work. Code is open source and fully editable.

JPC-RR Download

Rerecording emulator for DOS, written in Java. First thing I could get to launch LBA and play. The good thing is every TAS features work perfectly and the game doesn't crash. The bad thing is that it's so slow it's just unreliable to TAS lba. So this tool won't work until someone tries it and find some settings combination that would work. On my side I tried for 4 hours and got nothing to work properly. I got it to work by following the guide on TASvideos, you shouldn't have trouble to launch LBA with it. The nice thing I found is that it didn't needed a VM, I was able to run this directly from my mac because it's java.

DOSBox Bisqwit Download

This modified version of DOSBox includes many TAS features including movie recording, savestates, frame skipping etc. I have tested on a Win XP and Win 7 VM. To launch the game I inserted the original LBA cd, mounted the cd drive (mount d d:/ -t cdrom), mounted the c drive (mount c c:/), navigated to lba folder and launched (relent.exe). Result I get an error with (dos4gw.exe) which I'm not getting in the new official release of DOSBox. That being said it tells me that the Bisqwit DOSBox is outdated and not supported anymore.

Hourglass Resurrection No Download

Basically Hourglass Resurrection is the current project the TAS community have started to make a better version of the current Hourglass software. However the actual is worst in kind of bugs and still in development. Last public info from author: "Progress happens as I have time to write code for it. Haven't had time in the last 2 weeks however, may have some time during next week. If you want a more detailed progress, feel free to poke me on IRC with specific questions.", "The features needed for enhanced game support are not finished, you will not see a difference over the r81 release of nitsuja's Hourglass in compatibility, just more crashes (due to unfinished features).". Fortunately the last forum post he made dated from ( 2016-01-06) which is good.

Bizhawk PSX Download

Bizhawk is a multi platform TAS emulator which is reliable. Unfortunatly the title says it all (PSX). It's only if you're interested in TAS the PSX version which don't have the reset animation, untested meca, etc. If you're still interested you'll need to install the prereq installer and then you can launch the download link above. Don't forget to create a folder "Firmware" in the root of the app. And add the PSX firmwares inside. That pack contains all PSX firmwares and I noticed the only LBA rom I could find is a europe, so I think the europe firmware is (SCPH7003) or the latest on the list.

DOSBox Download

Untested yet with LBA. This would be the last option but we can reduce the cycles in DOSBox which could maybe used as speedrunning purpose. With all the options above, I think it would be a better bet with Hourglass.

Oracle VM VirtualBox Download

Untested yet with LBA. Worst option out there but could be it someday if nothing above works. A VM could have savestates but takes lot of ram and it would be really slow to reload a state. We can also reduce speed of the game by giving the VM low specs but it'll end up in a unstable speed which is nearly impossible to put back at normal speed. This option is totally dumb, try it at the risk of loosing your time.

[Battler]

I could try to implement some form of state saving into PCem. The tricky thing would be saving the state of the CPU and of the dynamic recompiler.

[gravel22]

Originally Posted by Battler

I could try to implement some form of state saving into PCem. The tricky thing would be saving the state of the CPU and of the dynamic recompiler.

Hi Battler, your help would be really appreciated. I tried PCem yesterday and let me tell you I got nowhere with it! If you want to give some time I have edited the log of Hourglass and we got the game to launch but it crashes after some time. If you can help us figure it out! Anyway any help will be appreciated!

[gravel22]

EDIT: Hourglass (26-03-2016)
EDIT: JPC-RR (26-03-2016)

See original updated post above.

[Battler]

- gravel22: You got nowhere with it? What problem did you have? I recommend getting this version: http://goo.gl/JYoP4k as it has some improvements I made that haven't yet reached the mainline. Will update that probably tomorrow too. Also, unlike the mainline, it contains all the ROM's you need, so you're good to go. You also need to install DOS, I can provide you with any version you want, even with ready to go hard disk images. (Just not publicly on this forum due to copyright reasons, well unless you wish to adventure in making LBA 1 run on FreeDOS, for which I can only wish you good luck. )

Come to my IRC network (irc.rol.im), channel #pcem-x, and I'll be glad to help you.

[Polaris]

Can't even start up DOSBox Bisqwit, the command window is completely dark

[gravel22]

Originally Posted by Polaris

Can't even start up DOSBox Bisqwit, the command window is completely dark

Hi Polaris, I think the dosbox is in pause. You can try pressing F4, to unpause it

[gravel22]

EDIT: Hourglass (31-03-2016)

See original updated post above.