how to avoid the random stage issue in a .dtm movie file on Project M ?

[Sterkmann]

Hello.

I'm playing Project M, the Super Smash bros. hack on Dolphin 5.0 and when I netplay, I record the inputs. The DTM files are not corrupted, but I can't see the movie because when we chose the stage, we just push the start button and it's a random stage which is chosen, and players are placed at a random place on the stage too. So when I play the .dtm file with Dolphin, the chosen stage is another one than the chosen one when I recorded the file, and the places are different too. It results that the movie is perfect until someone pushes start (circa 1min of movie =_=) and then the players are out of controls (because the inputs fit another stage and place).



I would like to know how I can :

1. modify the .dtm file to try to find again what stages were selected and where the players were placed on.
2. modify the .dtm file in the way I can specify the stage and the place of the player. Is it possible to "force" the random choice to be one chosen stage and players' places or will I must to delete the random selection with start and input the selection of the stage with the joystick and A ?
3. see the input button (when the controller 4 pushes start or something)

I attached the .dtm file (47mo)

(excuse my english, I'm french)

[mimimi]

So you are playing this via netplay with at least 2 players, and record DTM file at the same time. And while you play it's fine, and both players get the same stage, but when you load the DTM to replay the match, there are differences? Sounds like a bug, and it should be fixed in Dolphin, and not by modifying the .dtm file by hand.

Are you using the latest version of Dolphin? I think there was a patch for movie recording on netplay not long ago.

[Sterkmann]

After a quick research on Google, TASvideos.org says that versions before 4.xx.xx crash, but I'm not concerned because I use the last 5.0 version.


Yeah the play was perfect, we were 4 players, but the playback is fucked up because of the randomness of the action "push start for random stage". I saw that many people use the hexadecimal editors to modify the TAS files. It's long and hard, so I would prefer to avoid to learn all that. However I found that :

https://github.com/lioncash/DTMEditor

The screenshots shows a simple interface, but I can't open it. I don't know it's some C# language.
There are some .cs files, I don't know wht is it. (sorry I'm total newbie)

Maybe with this software I could check if the information that makes that the right stage is chosen (so Dolphin recorded this information and the DTM is good, no need to modify it & the problem comes from the playback) or if it's missing (Dolphin doesn't record well the DTM and some minor informations like the random stages are not recorded, and I need to modify the DTM).

[JosJuice]

(03-06-2017, 03:47 AM)Sterkmann Wrote: Maybe with this software I could check if the information that makes that the right stage is chosen (so Dolphin recorded this information and the DTM is good, no need to modify it & the problem comes from the playback) or if it's missing (Dolphin doesn't record well the DTM and some minor informations like the random stages are not recorded, and I need to modify the DTM).

Information about things like that isn't stored in the DTM per se. All the DTM contains is controller inputs and some settings. All behavior by the game, including RNG like stage selection, has to be inferred by Dolphin based on just the controller inputs. So if just one single bit of controller input is wrong, or any important setting is wrong, or some code in Dolphin is non-deterministic, you will get desync problems like the RNG being different. It's usually very hard to find out what the reason behind a desync is.

[Sterkmann]

(03-06-2017, 05:41 AM)JosJuice Wrote: Information about things like that isn't stored in the DTM per se. All the DTM contains is controller inputs and some settings. All behavior by the game, including RNG like stage selection, has to be inferred by Dolphin based on just the controller inputs. So if just one single bit of controller input is wrong, or any important setting is wrong, or some code in Dolphin is non-deterministic, you will get desync problems like the RNG being different. It's usually very hard to find out what the reason behind a desync is.

Ok but maybe I can fix the issue adding some quick frames where the controller choses the right stage ? 

[Kurausukun]

That wouldn't really work. Are you using one of the revisions of Dolphin that allow for saves over netplay? If this is the case, and you didn't back up your save before you started playing, you're not going to get it to work no matter what you do.