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Pokémon Discussion

Twitch Plays Pokemon! - Page 1

Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Missing? NO!
Date: 2014-02-16 01:13:43
http://www.twitch.tv/twitchplayspokemon

If you haven't heard about this yet, you're living under a rock. It's funny to watch 30,000+ try to conquer a ledge and consult the Helix Fossil for advice over and over again.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: OwnageMuch
Date: 2014-02-16 03:32:56
[img]https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BglcaR_CcAEhawy.png:large[/img]

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: camper
Date: 2014-02-16 13:00:15
[img]http://25.media.tumblr.com/fabd3a110e33080994747b5f5d2075d1/tumblr_n12u40nF9s1r952tco3_500.png[/img]
[img]http://24.media.tumblr.com/2919805db2c4baa0bbcb737645f97f16/tumblr_n12u40nF9s1r952tco2_500.png[/img]
New update:
They planned to use Poke Doll to skip the Silph Co. part, but have unfortunately used/tossed them all.  ;D

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2014-02-21 14:38:40

Surprised there hasn't been a topic made about it yet. Thoughts?
Thoughts on the Anarchy/Democracy addition?

I've been watching since Brock's gym, and it's really addicting.


I find it exciting to check on what point they have got to in the game every day or so, but after watching it for a relatively short period of time it soon gets boring for me (unless they're in a gym fight, or something).

I have mixed thoughts about the addition of the democracy system. On one hand it reduces the surprise factor of whether they will ever make progress, but on the other hand there are parts of the game that would likely take a really long, indefinite amount of time without it. I believe that democracy has helped TPP get past Rocket Hideout and the Safari Zone (correct me if I'm wrong). I like how the users have to vote to change the system because I feel the unpredictability of the stream is what makes it unique.

I was thinking that getting past the Safari Zone would be very hard at first, but they did it. At the moment, TPP need to obtain the Card Key and beat Silph Co.

In Trakof's Twitch Play Pokémon Blue, they have already made it to the Elite Four and just need to beat them. I'm under the impression that TPPB does not have a democracy mode. Is that true? Did they beat the Safari Zone/get Surf and the Gold Teeth without any cheating? That would be impressive, even though the amount of viewers at a time on Twitch Plays Pokémon Blue is significantly less.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: camper
Date: 2014-02-22 00:21:25
I'm just disappointed that they haven't discovered any glitches by accident with all those chaos. They did try to get in the Cycling Road, but didn't spam b and left enough to get past the guard. They also used up all Poke Dolls so they had to get the Silph Scope.

The live commentary

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Zowayix
Date: 2014-02-22 02:45:08

In Trakof's Twitch Play Pokémon Blue, they have already made it to the Elite Four and just need to beat them. I'm under the impression that TPPB does not have a democracy mode. Is that true? Did they beat the Safari Zone/get Surf and the Gold Teeth without any cheating? That would be impressive, even though the amount of viewers at a time on Twitch Plays Pokémon Blue is significantly less.


I don't know what a democracy mode is because I haven't seen the TPP livestream for a while, but the Blue stream just beat the game. Quite an impressive amount of coordination (and in-battle luck).

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Missingnoguy55
Date: 2014-02-22 08:24:46
If they get to Cinnabar and end up using the Old Man Trick I'll die laughing.


However, the chances of that are slim to nil.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2014-02-22 08:52:58


In Trakof's Twitch Play Pokémon Blue, they have already made it to the Elite Four and just need to beat them. I'm under the impression that TPPB does not have a democracy mode. Is that true? Did they beat the Safari Zone/get Surf and the Gold Teeth without any cheating? That would be impressive, even though the amount of viewers at a time on Twitch Plays Pokémon Blue is significantly less.


I don't know what a democracy mode is because I haven't seen the TPP livestream for a while, but the Blue stream just beat the game. Quite an impressive amount of coordination (and in-battle luck).


The democracy mode is where instead of your actions being read and executed immediately, the system tallies the amount of votes for certain commands, e.g. if the majority is 150 people 'voting' A, then A will be pressed. I don't know how long it is until the action is chosen/how many votes are necessary though. A new feature introduced in democracy is that you can vote for special commands where iterations of the same button will be pressed in succession, but some people have used that to spam 'start9' in protest to quickly get people to vote for anarchy mode, again.

Sample anarchy/democracy mode bar:

[img]http://i.minus.com/jbucTo1QEfS4NP.png[/img]

The more people who vote democracy, the more the bar will shift until the democracy mode is used. Likewise, if it's democracy mode the more people who vote for anarchy the more the bar will shift until anarchy mode is used.

Apparently, originally when TPP weren't making progress, the streamer made it be democracy mode without letting you switch back to anarchy mode, but that was changed after start9 protests.

RE: Twitch Plays Pokémon Blue: Wow, that's impressive! So their Blastoise was level 92 when it ended. Last time I checked he was level 70 something, so they must have grinded him up.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: camper
Date: 2014-02-26 21:40:24
It turns out that they're using a badly-made "151" ROM, which only changed the title screen, the SGB border and corrupted a sign in Vermilion.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Tsukuu
Date: 2014-03-01 06:58:34
Aaaaaand they beat the game! Gen 2 starts tomorrow.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Blaziken257
Date: 2014-03-02 15:51:03
There is a stream of Crystal now, but one thing that I must criticize is the choice of the emulator used.

I can tell from the sound quality that VisualBoyAdvance 1.7.2 is used here. And this is one reason why I'm criticizing it. The channel where there are muffling noises is louder than it is on a real Game Boy, which makes certain music like Violet City and Route 38 sound terrible. Not only that, but the emulator has this weird buzzing noise that also is not present on a real Game Boy. It makes music like Saffron City sound even more terrible. I've also noticed it in Rage's animation as well, though it's less noticeable there. (The same inaccuracy also affects music in other games, like Wario Land 3. Listen to the music for The Vast Plain, The Grasslands, The Pool of Rain, and The Stagnant Swamp at night. It sounds HORRIBLE on VBA 1.7.2.)

And of course, the sound is not the only issue. VBA 1.7.2 has a glitch where if you play from 12:00am to 12:59am, and you're outdoors, the palette will have the daytime palette. This is because on VBA 1.7.2, the byte that stores the hour is 24 instead of 0, and the game is not programmed to handle this properly. This issue also affects Telefang, where the palette is completely white! (Though in that case, you won't notice it if you play it on a regular monochrome Game Boy, since the palette doesn't change based on the hour.)

Seriously, VBA 1.7.2 was released in 2004 (according to Wikipedia), and it baffles me that people still use it. There are far more accurate emulators out there. BGB and Gambatte, while not 100% accurate, are much better and don't have the issues that I described. Even VBA-M is more accurate than VBA 1.7.2. To anybody who is reading this and still uses VBA 1.7.2, do yourself a favor and use one of the emulators that I mentioned instead.

And yes, VBA (presumably 1.7.2) was used for the Red playthrough as well, but it doesn't have a clock, and the music is different, so the inaccurate sound emulation is not as noticeable, which is why I didn't say anything about it back then. But still, I almost always use BGB for GB/GBC games nowadays.

Sorry, I had to get this off my chest.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Tsukuu
Date: 2014-03-02 16:03:35
I only use VBA 1.7.2 for VBA-link, because it's much better than the 1.8.0 version, but that's different.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: OwnageMuch
Date: 2014-03-02 16:13:10
Do the newer versions of VBA still corrupt the PC?

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: Torchickens
Date: 2014-03-02 16:29:10
I mainly use a version of VBA re-recording for my glitch videos, even though I know that the sound quality is inaccurate, because the AVI recording feature is convenient and allows you to easily encode a video.

For music related videos, I would consider using CamStudio with Stereo Mix (I use that when I don't use VBA) with BGB open, but unfortunately my version of Windows doesn't have Stereo Mix work the way it used to. It's unfortunate, because with my previous laptop I could record the music with my volume at 0, but now I have to turn it to 100 to get the best volume and that would disturb my mother. Mind you, I did have some headphones somewhere and if I plugged them into the laptop the music at 100 wouldn't be so loud (unless you wore them), so I don't really have an excuse other than the fact that I can't find them.

BGB has a method of recording on Options->Sound when you check 'animation recording' and you can record sound with the WAV file writer. By using ffmpeg via Command Prompt, you can combine them to make a video.

Problem is this is a bit messy as the emulator will create a BMP every frame (or every 2 frames?), and for a video that isn't short you'll end up with loads of BMPs taking up space and cluttering up your folder.

Additionally, the videos you get with that code may be glitchy. For some of my game music videos on my alternative Youtube account (Torchickens) there are three errors. Firstly, for some videos the total length (as in the y values in x:xx/y:yy) is much shorter, and it seems that they won't even play past the end anymore. Secondly, the picture you combine with the video may only show for a short time (looking back, maybe this was a mistake of mine) and I remember certain parts of the music on one video (I'm sure it was more than one) pausing.

I shouldn't really complain about those additional problems though. I'm not familiar with FFMPEG, so it's possible that something else should have been added to the code to make the videos suitable for Youtube (or it could be mainly due to a Youtube encoding problem). I'm now convinced though; to make a video with accurate sound/RTC I should use BGB with CamStudio/Stereo Mix.

Re: Twitch Plays Pokemon!

Posted by: camper
Date: 2014-03-03 06:53:45
I use VBA re-recording v21. The music sounds good enough, just a bit too loud. I like the AVI recording feature, though it can't record crash screens. (It can, but over-recording it can make the video glitchy AND crash my video editor whenever that part is loaded.)

On the other hand, my VBA 1.7.2 is completely broken for some reason (the sound is laggy and cluttered). Re-installing won't work.