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I have a 9-year-old son who is a bit of a geek and has some programming experience (javascript etc). He is interested in how an OoT TAS is made. We have a windows XP machine, a relatively new mac and a linux laptop, and have no snobbishness when it comes to choosing an OS -- we'll just choose the best one for the job. I downloaded project 64 and mupen 64 onto the windows machine and both run OoT fine (we own two legal copies of OoT so I have no qualms about using a rom). What next? I have 25 years of programming experience including writing in assembly language, so have no fear of getting my hands dirty with hex editors or whatever. My son is young but a quick learner. I thought I could just google around to find the next step, but on the other hand I thought it was worth asking here first. Any help appreciated.

Mupen64-rr (re-recording) is what you need to TAS. There is a specific version of it that fixes the pause bug for OoT. I don't have it on hand but you could PM SwordlessLink about it.

You don't need to know anything about programming language or stuff like that
A Tool-Assisted Speedrun is made by using Mupen Rerecording to go frame by frame playing the game, and using savestates. Because you can make the right inputs on the perfect frame you need, and you are able to go back and easily correct any mistake you make, you can make these near perfect runs. Making a tool assisted speedrun of these games is no more than playing the game frame by frame and savestating while mupen will record your inputs that you wanted and play them back perfectly whenever you want.

You'll also want the TAS plugin and set that as your input in the settings. This is a nifty way to use the "controller" as it allows you to make exact inputs with the joystick and buttons on the frames. I don't remember the link for it but it shouldn't be hard to find.

I don't even know if there are any beginner type tutorials on making a TAS in OoT; you pick up and learn things as you go but it definitely helps to have guys like Swordless and MrGrunz help along the way.

OK -- I have mupen64 v0.5.1 with the TAS input plugin and things seem to be working fine! Documentation seems very poor -- I had to guess a few times before I found where to put the plugin dll, but at present we have Link running in circles in Kokiri village without anyone pressing any buttons, which is a start at least. Now to find out how to do frame-by-frame inputs...**GAARGH DAMN PAUSE BUG GAARGH** dammit.

I believe that's Run -> Frame Advance

Also notice the key to the right of it when you click that. It's the \| key. Every time you press that key, you advance a frame. So you can have the joystick holding one way for 1 frame, press that key, and then move it somewhere else (same with all the buttons like A, B, Z, etc.).

That's a hotkey that you press on the keyboard like RG said, and you need a specific version of Mupen64 that has the pause bug fixed. (Just search "Mupen64 re-recording OoT edition" and you'll find what you need.)

SL has another way of fixing the pause bug for the reset recording version but he hasn't given me the details on what to do.