Hi there, I noticed the emulator has some basic save-state and movie recording in it, but I was wondering if it might be feasible to see more features geared for tool-assisted speedruns?
Some features I'm talking about (note that I'm not on a system currently that I can see if Nestopia has the features, sorry if I'm just repeating some it already has):
* Movie recording from console power-on, without a savestate. This should ideally be done in a manner that users can still start recording from any point with a savestate (or from a system reset with a savestate...)
* Frame-advance capabilities so TASers can optimally control their movie. (I also had the thought that perhaps it could also be done on a cycle-advance scale, though it'd make movie files substantially larger than might be needed, perhaps for the users that want it, you can variably change how often input is recorded in a movie file, so they don't get extraordinarily large for people just doing simple frame-advance; hey options never hurt).
* Bullet-proof save states. That is, each save state made during a movie also has a copy of the complete movie up to that point; this allows users to go through several points in the movie without breaking the main file. Save states from non-movie play should be rejected from loading to prevent accidental movie corruption (though loading save states from during a movie during regular play shouldn't be prevented).
* Read-only movie playing, so users can load movie save states to play from that point on. (Some checking might also be done to verify that the save state doesn't conflict with the input the movie actually has...)
* Displaying the number of frames that have happened; this is very useful to compare movie times accurately, especially if you're only timing single levels out of the entire run.
* Displaying input, so users can find out exactly how a certain trick or maneuver is performed.
* Flexible autofire. Instead of merely turning on/off a button press constantly, you could define how often a button is pressed and for how long (eg, hold A for 2 frames, let go for 4 frames, repeat).
* AVI output so people can share TAS videos with other people that lack a ROM-image.
I'm not trying to demand anything, but since I don't know how to code, I figured to ask (hey the worst case is that you don't implement any of them, and it wouldn't be a large loss :P). I like TASes, and sometimes I like to make them. Doing it in a accuracy-focused emulator would IMO be better than forever relying on FCEU as people currently do.
EDIT: I found a page on TASVideos <
http://tasvideos.org/NewEmulatorConditions.html> which explains some things as well.
