VGS NES Weekly Contest - Blue Marlin!

[dvertov | 205]

Updated my score with a 1201 lb catch that was pure luck. I still can't quite figure out how to keep the hook from coming loose but the big guy got tired early and I was able to reel him in. I'm probably not going to beat that score so I guess I'll just beat the game now?

[NESfiend | 1,515]

20 hours ago, dvertov said:

544 lbs

1201 lbs

 

Pretty crazy. I just updated to the exact same score.

[dvertov | 205]

 

On 3/30/2021 at 8:40 PM, NESfiend said:

Pretty crazy. I just updated to the exact same score.

I don't know how tiebreakers work for these contests but it really should be biggest marlin, not just because they're tough to reel in but because they're so hard to find in the first place.

For the record, mine is 730lbs 994lbs

 

 

Edited April 1, 2021 by dvertov

[NESfiend | 1,515]

14 minutes ago, dvertov said:

 

I don't know how tiebreakers work for these contests but it really should be biggest marlin, not just because they're tough to reel in but because they're so hard to find in the first place.

For the record, mine is 730lbs (so far)

 

Thats a terrific suggestion!

[mbd39 | 2,020]

 

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

8 hours ago, FireHazard51 said:

You hooked a 1205, but did you catch it?  I swear some hooked fish are just impossible to actually catch unless I'm missing something.  The line strength and hook set don't seem to get better with time.  Those potentials don't change with experience/leveling up in the game.

Basically what Jeevan said. I hooked and caught it but it doesn't count because I was using save states and other tools to help reverse the game.

8 hours ago, NESfiend said:

Points or no points, Ill compete with ya for biggest marlin. I got 958 lbs up there now. Top it and I will try to vest you between catching sharks. 

7 hours ago, NESfiend said:

Glad you mentioned that because Id been meaning to thank @0xDEAFC0DE for doing that. I have been curious if it was possible to catch a 1000 lb marlin. I dont recall ever doing that or seeing it. Usually you move on once you get a 900+ because thats enough to win any tourney. But now that I know there are 1000 lb marlin, I want to see one of those bitches on the scale. Get after it @docile tapeworm

I caught this one

 

[NESfiend | 1,515]

Holy shit there it is. This is exactly why we needed a blue marlin week. 1000k marlin - a thing of beauty 

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

Ok, @BeaIank and @guillavoie I'm going to need a ruling on this one.

A bit of background first. So, it turns out that the max size Marlin is not 1007. I noticed a special case in the code that if certain conditions are met, it would not go through the standard pick a random size based off of fish type code. I explored the conditions and figured out how to trigger them in game and found that they trigger a spawning of a 1800-1807 lbs Marlin.

So, naturally I built myself up and caught one of these legit (after I think failing twice). However, when I selected the fish to weigh it the game crashed. Luckily, I took a picture as I caught it (see below). On a clean save I hacked the fish back to see if the crash was reproduceable and sure enough it crashed in the same place. So, my question is does this count? I wasn't able to figure out it's exact weight, but I did catch it and I know it's in the range 1800-1807.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

I made a video of the crash as well.

 

[OptOut | 8,883]

1 hour ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Ok, @BeaIank and @guillavoie I'm going to need a ruling on this one.

A bit of background first. So, it turns out that the max size Marlin is not 1007. I noticed a special case in the code that if certain conditions are met, it would not go through the standard pick a random size based off of fish type code. I explored the conditions and figured out how to trigger them in game and found that they trigger a spawning of a 1800-1807 lbs Marlin.

So, naturally I built myself up and caught one of these legit (after I think failing twice). However, when I selected the fish to weigh it the game crashed. Luckily, I took a picture as I caught it (see below). On a clean save I hacked the fish back to see if the crash was reproduceable and sure enough it crashed in the same place. So, my question is does this count? I wasn't able to figure out it's exact weight, but I did catch it and I know it's in the range 1800-1807.

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

1 hour ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Ok, @BeaIank and @guillavoie I'm going to need a ruling on this one.

A bit of background first. So, it turns out that the max size Marlin is not 1007. I noticed a special case in the code that if certain conditions are met, it would not go through the standard pick a random size based off of fish type code. I explored the conditions and figured out how to trigger them in game and found that they trigger a spawning of a 1800-1807 lbs Marlin.

So, naturally I built myself up and caught one of these legit (after I think failing twice). However, when I selected the fish to weigh it the game crashed. Luckily, I took a picture as I caught it (see below). On a clean save I hacked the fish back to see if the crash was reproduceable and sure enough it crashed in the same place. So, my question is does this count? I wasn't able to figure out it's exact weight, but I did catch it and I know it's in the range 1800-1807.

Spoiler

There goes my damn victory now...

 

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

2 hours ago, dvertov said:

 

I don't know how tiebreakers work for these contests but it really should be biggest marlin, not just because they're tough to reel in but because they're so hard to find in the first place.

For the record, mine is 730lbs (so far)

 

My tiebreaker if it's needed....804 lbs

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

Well, I beat the game tonight, so I guess I'm done hunting Marlin (I updated my other post with a picture of my 878 lb Marlin catch).  Even though Marlin are way more fun to chase and reel in, I guess I'll go shark hunting for the rest of the week for the purposes of placing on this contest's scoreboard...

[guillavoie | 1,208]

2 hours ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Ok, @BeaIank and @guillavoie I'm going to need a ruling on this one.

A bit of background first. So, it turns out that the max size Marlin is not 1007. I noticed a special case in the code that if certain conditions are met, it would not go through the standard pick a random size based off of fish type code. I explored the conditions and figured out how to trigger them in game and found that they trigger a spawning of a 1800-1807 lbs Marlin.

So, naturally I built myself up and caught one of these legit (after I think failing twice). However, when I selected the fish to weigh it the game crashed. Luckily, I took a picture as I caught it (see below). On a clean save I hacked the fish back to see if the crash was reproduceable and sure enough it crashed in the same place. So, my question is does this count? I wasn't able to figure out it's exact weight, but I did catch it and I know it's in the range 1800-1807.

Lordly Lord, that's a good one here.

I wish you could try it on a cartridge to see if it does the same thing.

If it counts, it means that anyone who can catch a blue marlin under the conditions you find out would be tied for 1st place at 1800 lbs, right?

[guillavoie | 1,208]

11 minutes ago, Dr. Morbis said:

Well, I beat the game tonight, so I guess I'm done hunting Marlin (I updated my other post with a picture of my 878 lb Marlin catch).  Even though Marlin are way more fun to chase and reel in, I guess I'll go shark hunting for the rest of the week for the purposes of placing on this contest's scoreboard...

Well, if you prefer fishing blue marlin, do like 0xDEAF, crack the code and catch the 1800 lbs beast!

[Dr. Morbis | 2,088]

2 hours ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Ok, @BeaIank and @guillavoie I'm going to need a ruling on this one.

A bit of background first. So, it turns out that the max size Marlin is not 1007. I noticed a special case in the code that if certain conditions are met, it would not go through the standard pick a random size based off of fish type code. I explored the conditions and figured out how to trigger them in game and found that they trigger a spawning of a 1800-1807 lbs Marlin.

So, naturally I built myself up and caught one of these legit (after I think failing twice). However, when I selected the fish to weigh it the game crashed. Luckily, I took a picture as I caught it (see below). On a clean save I hacked the fish back to see if the crash was reproduceable and sure enough it crashed in the same place. So, my question is does this count? I wasn't able to figure out it's exact weight, but I did catch it and I know it's in the range 1800-1807.

 

Man, you broke the friggin' game!  What's with all this hacker shit!  You should just be driving around in your boat and catching fish like the rest of us.  You're like  C3P0 when he's always giving the odds and calculations.  Much like all of our impending deaths, I'd rather not know some things, and it would have been a cool mystery to see what the biggest weigh-in was at the end of the week.

 

13 minutes ago, guillavoie said:

If it counts, it means that anyone who can catch a blue marlin under the conditions you find out would be tied for 1st place at 1800 lbs, right?

 

How can it count without an official weight?  Until you go and weigh the fish, you just have approximations with a 100 lb variance (50 lbs either way).  It even says on his screen shot "about 1800 pounds" - that's not an official weight.  This contest should only be for fish officially weighed by the game itself.  If the game is crashing when he tries to weigh it, what more of a sign do you need???

Edited March 31, 2021 by Dr. Morbis

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

1 minute ago, guillavoie said:

Lordly Lord, that's a good one here.

I wish you could try it on a cartridge to see if it does the same thing.

If it counts, it means that anyone who can catch a blue marlin under the conditions you find out would be tied for 1st place at 1800 lbs, right?

I'll see if I can gain access to my NES to test it out (I'll still have to run it off an everdrive since I don't own the cart), but I'm not sure if I'll have the time to catch another one this week. I did test in both fceux and EmuHawk and both of those crash.

But yeah there'd be no way to check the exact weight past it being somewhere in the 1800-1807 without poking around in RAM. Still I kind of doubt anyone else will get it. I couldn't find any info online when I used some keywords, and I'm not giving away my secrets until after the week is up. So, they would have to reverse the game as well.

[0xDEAFC0DE | 1,277]

Oops, meant to post that last message awhile ago. Anyway since then, I debugged the code to figure out why it's crashing (because I don't do that enough in my regular job, lol) and I'm sure this will occur on a real cart. The issue comes from how it calculates what weighing scene to show (some examples from this thread in the spoiler below). There are four different screens and the screen is picked by dividing the weight by 256 rounding down (with the first screen being screen 0). Since the max normal Marlin weight is 1007, it would use screen 3 (= trunc(1007/256)). However, the special case fish would use screen 7 (= trunc(1807/256)). There is no screen 7 so when it tries to access the data associated with screen 7 it gets an out of bounds error that results in reading garbage memory that eventually ends in the code spinning in an endless loop. If we force the game to use screen 3 everything else works correctly as seen in the picture below the spoiler.

Spoiler

[BeaIank | 1,618]

2 hours ago, 0xDEAFC0DE said:

Oops, meant to post that last message awhile ago. Anyway since then, I debugged the code to figure out why it's crashing (because I don't do that enough in my regular job, lol) and I'm sure this will occur on a real cart. The issue comes from how it calculates what weighing scene to show (some examples from this thread in the spoiler below). There are four different screens and the screen is picked by dividing the weight by 256 rounding down (with the first screen being screen 0). Since the max normal Marlin weight is 1007, it would use screen 3 (= trunc(1007/256)). However, the special case fish would use screen 7 (= trunc(1807/256)). There is no screen 7 so when it tries to access the data associated with screen 7 it gets an out of bounds error that results in reading garbage memory that eventually ends in the code spinning in an endless loop. If we force the game to use screen 3 everything else works correctly as seen in the picture below the spoiler.

Ruling is pretty straight forward in this case.
Since the game always crash due to poorly written code, then it doesn't count.

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

dude is just using save states and code....and it crashes the game....what are we doing here playing nintendo or learning the matrix?

[Jeevan | 8,910]

8 minutes ago, docile tapeworm said:

dude is just using save states and code....and it crashes the game....what are we doing here playing nintendo or learning the matrix?

matrix of course, didn't u see the movie debate?  @Reed Rothchild knew about @0xDEAFC0DE that is why he chose it!!!!

[BeaIank | 1,618]

Also, I, in all my evilness, decree that there will be NO TIE BREAKER this week.
So get those stupid heavy sharks and not those stupid marlins and let's have a top 8 fully tied in 1st.

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

3 hours ago, BeaIank said:

Ruling is pretty straight forward in this case.
Since the game always crash due to poorly written code, then it doesn't count.

Edited March 31, 2021 by FireHazard51

[FireHazard51 | 2,043]

6 minutes ago, BeaIank said:

Also, I, in all my evilness, decree that there will be NO TIER BREAKER this week.
So get those stupid heavy sharks and not those stupid marlins and let's have a top 8 fully tied in 1st.

 

Spoiler

guess I'll be spam fishing those great whites

 

[docile tapeworm | 4,198]

1 hour ago, Jeevan said:

matrix of course, didn't u see the movie debate?  @Reed Rothchild knew about @0xDEAFC0DE that is why he chose it!!!!

i dont want to!! use a calculator, some kind of code you read.... what the hell?

thats why ole codie had to site a youtube video to share techs for smb3 cause you can look at the code all you want but it aint gonna help you stomp koopas...in this application its like using the fishfinder 10000 lx.....get the hell out of here with that bull!!!