Optimizing our way through Metroid

(antithesis.com)

107 points | by eatonphil 2 days ago ago

17 comments

  • o11c 3 hours ago ago

    Hmm, scrolling lags even without javascript (Firefox ESR, Linux). Last time I saw this I think they fix was something about gradients/blur?

    There's also some kind of weird input-capture stopping keyboard scrolling at first, and the video player is some weird thing I can't see how to make work.

  • jboggan 8 hours ago ago

    Fantastic read and a really interesting company I did not know about until just now.

    I would love to see how it handles Castlevania II.

    • wwilson 8 hours ago ago

      Haven’t tried Castlevania II, but here’s the first one: https://antithesis.com/blog/castlevania/

      • AIPedant 5 hours ago ago

        This seems like a cool company and I don't want to nitpick too much, but gamers have no respect for history:

          Castlevania... [so] called because it is a Metroidvania game set in a Castle.
        
        Ouch - this is precisely backwards. Metroidvanias are named after Metroid and Castlevania because those series practically defined the genre.

        Also a bit frustrating because the first Castlevania itself isn't actually a metroidvania, it's a more conventional action-platformer. Castlevania II has non-linear exploration, lots of items to collect, and puzzle-solving, all like Metroid. So it's not too surprising Antithesis had to do a lot of work for adapting their system to Metroid - but I wonder if this work means it now can handle Castlevania II without much extra development.

        • wwilson 4 hours ago ago

          You were successfully trolled. :-)

    • gblargg 7 hours ago ago

      > I would love to see how it handles Castlevania II.

      I assume you're thinking specifically of using the red crystal to spawn a tornado: https://youtu.be/Mx9PwRIK9Io

    • tyleo 8 hours ago ago

      Yeah the company sounds interesting. I wish the main page had clearer info about what it does. There’s a lot of text but I want the simple, “here’s the little bit of example code to get going.”

      • tyleo 8 hours ago ago

        After a little more digging I found some very cool answers in the docs: https://antithesis.com/docs/

      • Aerbil313 3 hours ago ago

        I assume they are intentionally not very vocal, probably still maturing/scaling their platform. Until recently they were a stealth startup. The stuff they are doing is truly revolutionary.

  • bumbledraven 4 hours ago ago

    It would be neat if a fuzzer could help set a new tool-assisted speedrun (TAS) record.

    • wwilson 4 hours ago ago

      Yes, this is a really fun idea and something that we want to do. Though these days we’re setting our sights higher than Nintendo…

      A funny story though: a regular conference gimmick we have is “Man vs. Machine” where we have attendees race our fuzzer to the end of Mario level 1-1. We did this at the final year of Strange Loop, and the fuzzer was winning handily until not one, not two, but three different professional speedrunners walked by and destroyed us.

  • __s 5 hours ago ago

    Would expect some route optimization, there's spots where it bomb hops around corridor before proceeding. Seems like it could see running straight through would result in same game state sooner

    But I'm probably viewing this from TAS perspective instead of fuzzer perspective

    • wwilson 4 hours ago ago

      The longer you run it, the cleaner the run gets. But Metroid is a very compute-intensive game to fuzz, and we were already nearing the limits of what BigQuery could do for us with that run.

  • throwaway77770 6 hours ago ago

    For some reason, the embedded videos seem to break in Firefox Private Browsing (128esr). This had me stumped for a while until I tried it in a normal not-private window and it worked.

    • qrush 3 hours ago ago

      Curious - what OS? (I work at Wistia!)

  • jonny_eh 7 hours ago ago

    What’s antithesis? Consider that every blog article you write may be the reader’s first exposure to your company/project.