Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Probably not a perfect run, but very well TASed for a first time DOS TASer. What few aspects of sub-optimal play exist (such as the gravity/jump thing mentioned by c-square) shouldn't be grounds for rejection. YES Vote.
Radiant wrote:
Given how unusual it is for any game to have a 'reverse gravity' cheat code, I wonder if it would be interesting to have an alternative run that reverses gravity at-need and uses that to be even faster?
I strongly considered running this series using the gravity cheat as it should significantly shorten the run and present much more optimal routing.
My only concern is that you have to initiate God mode to utilize the gravity cheat work. This unfortunately means that Mylo is also invincible eliminating any 'danger' of failing the run.
I suppose that it could still be publishable if it qualified for Moons, but I don't think a 'Gravity Cheat' run could be vaulted.
I do think a run that uses the glitch to skip two levels would be vault worthy. I'm still considering running this series of games using this glitch (it works in all 3 episodes).
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Nach wrote:
slamo wrote:
Descent
Wacky Wheels
Terminal Velocity
Quarantine
One Must Fall 2097
IIRC, all these games use DOS/4G(W).
Warcraft uses DOS/4G(W) and also gets the int 15h error but still works on jpc-rr.
It seems to me that these errors/details are common with games that don't work, but not universal. If someone is interested in TASing a particular DOS game, just try it.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Seems ok. Vault material in my opinion.
Where is the hitbox on the balloon, the bottom end of the string or the balloon itself? There are times where it looks like you clip the bottom edge through some walls (perhaps these are the hits you're accepting). In these cases it looks like it clips through a couple wall blocks, on an angle usually. Some levels the goal region is only a couple wall blocks separate from another part of the path....could the clips happen there and shorten the levels?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
feos, I understand.
I didn't mean to suggest any malintent on anyone's part. I humbly apologize if it came across as skepticism/paranoia toward ThunderAxe31.
I was simply trying to share my opinion regarding a couple general concepts that this thread made me ponder. If that was unnecessary or inappropriate, I apologize.
Regarding this run: It's a better game than some other food/movie licensed games, but I didn't find it very entertaining. Meh vote.
I think the blurred animation of Chester's sprinting legs makes it look like he should be moving at much higher speeds than he actually does. To me, this slows the perception of the run's real speed.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
This movie looks very plain to me.
Memory wrote:
I honestly really liked this TAS.
Why?
ThunderAxe31, please don't read the following as being spoken in a rude/disrespectful tone; it's not intended to be. I recognize that you have claimed this run for judgement.Why one particular individual likes or finds a run entertaining shouldn't matter in determining if the run is perceived as entertaining to the audience as a whole. Though I can see how the 'why' may make a difference between moon/star tier.
Everyone has their own tastes. If multiple people disagree on entertainment value, that's fine. There's nothing wrong with varying perspectives because opinions are opinions.
In this particular case, Memory was able to describe the 'why'; but sometimes people enjoy things for reasons they cannot appropriately articulate in words.
I am assuming (hopefully correctly) that you are simply looking for more information with which to determine your judgement of this run, but calling specific individual(s) out to elaborate their opinion(s) shouldn't be necessary. I'd encourage a general request for more discussion/elaboration of opinions instead, and then those who wish to elaborate can do so.
Another general thought regarding judges... I'm of the opinion that a judge who has claimed a run should withhold their own personal opinion from the forum until after judgement has been made so as not to potentially skew the forum conversation one way or the other. In an ideal world, it wouldn't. But we unfortunately don't live in an ideal world.
DISCLAIMER: I have not yet watched this run, but will be doing so as I am able.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
In light of some recent topics regarding rule clarifications and a current submission of the Coleco port, I'm returning to this old thread...
Spikestuff (or anyone else), do you know an easy way to determine when the difficulty stops increasing?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Does the difficulty not increase beyond this point?
The reason I ask: I did a similar run on the C64 port that started on the hardest difficulty that could be selected and was told that the difficulty continued to increase beyond the level I played; and thus my run wasn't 'complete.'
I'm curious if that's the same situation with this port.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
[sarcasm]NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!![/sarcasm]
Judged as I anticipated.
Actually impressed the rejection note went into as much detail as it did. I expected something more simple along the lines of "Board Game + Unentertaining = Rejected"
At least we can scratch one more game off the TASmania list.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
GJTASer2018 and FreezerBurns:
The general rule for DOS games on the site is that they are run using the default CPU speed settings of JPC-rr (equivalent of a 50 Mhz processor) unless there's evidence to warrant a faster CPU speed setting (i.e. the game was released at a time when 100 Mhz CPUs were available).
The default settings do artificially increase the speed of some (not all) games made for older systems with slower CPUs, but this is accepted.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
@warmCabin
I'm not sure putting effort into a "100%" run is worth your time.
Firstly, I doubt there will be an agreeable consensus on what constitutes 100% for this game.
Secondly, I strongly doubt that enough entertainment will be added via actually completing the mini-games for a judge to take a different perspective than what Mothrayas already has with your rejected run.
Thirdly, as a run that actually completes the mini-games won't be that much different visually to a watcher than the rejected run. It would basically just add piecing together the pictures. It will also be longer, making it that much harder to get the required entertainment value.
To put it simply, this game's only hope to be published is if it garners significant entertainment feedback (not just votes) that qualify it for moon tier. It's not vault eligible regardless of voting or completion percent. Neither rejected run qualified for moons based on feedback. For the reasons mentioned above, a run that completes the mini-games probably won't fare much better.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
EDIT: I forgot to say thank you for the above clarifications. :END EDIT
The game reaches a point where difficulty stops increasing and no new content appears anymore.
The game consists of multiple rounds with new content appearing, and difficulty increases until it resets (overflows). For this the game must reach a point where new content no longer appears.
So for a game like Space Invaders or Galaxian where each level is identical aside from a difficulty curve that affects how quickly the enemies move or shoot back, at what point is it considered that no new content appears?
Does the run have to go all the way through the difficulty increase/overflow, or is one stage (or group of stages) sufficient?
The primary reason I ask is that for some games, the changes in difficulty curve may be barely perceptible visually; making it difficult to determine exactly where the difficulty stops increasing.
If it's barely or impossible to visually see when the difficulty stops changing (or whether it even does stop), is the onus on the TASer to decode the game in order to determine where the difficulty stops increasing (assuming it's not stated in the game documentation)?
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Nach wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
interactive fiction style runs
Most of these cannot be published for legal reasons.
That makes sense.
Some would argue that a lot of what we do publish is in a legal grey area. Interactive fiction would definitely be more B/W regarding copyright.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
slamo wrote:
So I tried running Fallout recently, and that too succumbs to the "int 15h" error. One thing I missed every time I saw this error is that it's coming from the BIOS. It makes me wonder if there is any BIOS we can plug into JPC-rr to get these games working. I tried using the newest version of the Bochs BIOS and VGABIOS to no avail. It would be interesting to try extracting the BIOS from DOSBox and plugging it into JPC-rr, but I have no idea where to start or if it would even be compatible. Either way, I think it's worth looking into other BIOS.
I looked into this briefly as well, but couldn't figure out how to extract it from DOSBox.
If we could, that'd probably be our best bet.
That or the error means the BIOS is calling for something the program isn't designed to do.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
phoenix1291 wrote:
If it can help I found this:
On http://gb64.com go to advanced search, then you have under "PAL/NTSC" PAL, NTSC+PAL and NTSC.
So very few NTSC only titles there.
Also it's not definitive. For example, there are numerous titles listed as PAL only that were made by Spinnaker Software which was an American company. It's hard for me to believe they'd only release those games as PAL only.
But I guess it still could be used as a resource.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Bisqwit wrote:
However, there is another factor that emerged at some point. TASVideos is also a one-of-a-kind library. It is the biggest and only website in the world that collects, nurtures and curates tool-assisted speedruns. (This is why I chose an .org domain, or earlier, .info, rather than a .com one.) This brings certain information-preservalist responsibilities. But being a library, and also an entertainment site, means that some of the conflicting responsibilities need clever compromises: We must collect all speedruns, or at least one of each game. We should also collect notable tool-assisted performances that are not speedruns. But we should also keep a high signal-to-noise ratio in terms of entertaining runs. We should also do the best to keep track of history, meaning knowledge of players, knowledge of history of each speedrun and speedrun category, knowledge of game versions that have been played, knowledge of the site itself, and so on. And we should document the findings and research that went into the making of each run, and knowledge that could go into making of future runs. And we should do all this in the highest and most lossless (or near lossless) quality possible. Yet, our files should be most accessible, so as to not exclude people who are behind slow and expensive Internet links or who use old performance-deficient computers: a library is public community service (despite being privately maintained), and it should provide equal access within reasonable limits. Equal access also benefits the entertainment aspect.
Although this may unfortunately open a can of worms...
If we are a library, what's the harm in including educational/board game/interactive fiction style runs? These types of titles wouldn't dilute the entertainment value of the site any more than the vault already has.
Just because some (or even most) people may find these titles to be unentertaining, doesn't mean everyone finds them unentertaining.
I understand the triviality argument, including when it's based on a TAS run being indiscernible from human play. But just because a game is trivial or indiscernible from human play doesn't mean it shouldn't be archived as the best known completion. Nor does it mean it's inherently unentertaining (Dragon's Lair is trivial, but some still find TAS runs of it entertaining).
To use an analogy based on libraries: most libraries I've been in have children's books like those written by Dr. Seuss available, even though those books would be considered trivial and simplistic to individuals who are there seeking the works of Dickens, Rand, or Dostoevsky. The libraries still carry all levels of reading knowing that their patrons are all at different levels.
The argument of triviality regarding video games, (to me) is an argument of entertainment. To reject edutainment/board games/interactive stories on this basis of triviality (or intent) suggests that triviality (or education) can't be entertaining to a patron. At some point in our site's history the vault was developed to house speedruns that weren't considered entertaining. Why does triviality matter if we're not concerned with the entertainment value of vault runs? If it's a title that can be speedrun and is TASable, we should consider hosting the result regardless of triviality. Yes, even if this means we have to unfortunately publish Desert Bus.
I'm not trying to be difficult, but I felt that Bisqwit's post described exactly why we should consider hosting these types of runs even though it wasn't the original intent of the site creator.
Bisqwit wrote:
Nonetheless, speedruns is not what TASVideos is. TASVideos is about entertaining videogame videos.
If entertainment is all the staff/community wants to be concerned with, then we must consider the proposition to eliminate the vault; though I'm sure this would anger a lot of the community. Many of us produce TASes knowing before we ever start working on them that they are doomed for a vault publication. It doesn't change the fact that we enjoy the process.
I anticipate rebuttal claiming that adding in trivial/edutainment/board games/interactive titles would create a greater amount of work for staff, encoders, and publishers. While I don't disagree with this statement; my simple response is this: no one claimed archival was easy.
IMO, a simple solution to publishing these style runs would be to add the following movie classes: Edutainment, Board Game, Interactive Fiction. Then simply have the option to filter--based on these classes--what publications show up when someone browses the site. We already filter browsing of NES runs based on Vault vs. Moon/Star by default. Similarly we could default the filter to not include these movie classes in the entertainment based sections of the site.
For what it's worth, I'm willing to help with whatever I'm able based on my knowledge, time, and my computer's capabilities.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
DoubleATam wrote:
Here's a slightly less embarassing second attempt, though I still don't think I'll win anyone over:
(I intend to give the codebase a look at some point to make up for it anyway. I don't like wasting your time)
I think this one looks like a stained glass window of the 'Holy Grail.'
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
^Thanks for the clarification. The confusion was centered around the incorrect perspective that it was all for branch names.
To make sure I understand this correctly: We should never see 'major skip glitch' in a branch name. There we would either see 'warp glitch' or 'game-end glitch.'
Then 'major skip glitch' would be one of the movie classes listed in the publication.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
The other option is to eliminate using the word 'warp' in relation to glitches altogether.
Reserve 'warp' for developer intended game warps, and use 'skip glitch' or 'major skip glitch' in branch labels to indicate unintended skipping of game portions otherwise intended by the developers.
Then you'd end up with the following:
If 'warp' is in the branch, viewers know it wasn't a glitch.
If 'skip' is in the branch, viewers know it was a glitch.
This would allow for easy identification of warped/warpless runs as well as glitched ones.
If a TAS happens to use both intentional warps and unintentional glitched skips, the branch would/could contain both labels. Here's a hypothetical example of this:
For SMB3, someone could use the warp whistles to get to world 7 and perform the game end glitch. This would be a 'warped, game-end glitch' branch. OR someone could play through all the worlds up to world 7 then perform the glitch; this would be a 'warpless, game-end glitch' branch.
Another hypothetical (although insanely unlikely given the game) would be if someone discovered a way to skip from the beginning of each stage directly to the flagpole of that stage in SMB1. Again, both a 'warped' and 'warpless' version would be possible--and depending on the time save of the glitch, the 'warpless' might even be faster, as warped would actually require playing through some of the stages instead of directly skipping to the flagpole. Thus this hypothetical could also use 'warped, skip glitch' or 'warpless, skip glitch' as a branch. Both indicating the use/non-use of intended warps and the use/non-use of glitched skips.
Essentially, the ambiguity of 'warp glitch' would be eliminated.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Wouldn't 'major skip glitch' depend on what was accomplished?
Those runs that jump to the end game would fall under 'game end glitch.' Those that only skip part of the game but don't skip to the end would fall under 'warp glitch.'
In essence, 'major skip glitch' is less descriptive than either of the other two.
The only benefit to 'major skip glitch' is that it helps to indicate that a large chunk was skipped whereas 'warp' glitch doesn't indicate how much was skipped.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
Makes sense. I was primarily emphasizing that I feel an any % run and a 100% run should both be vault eligible.
I don't mind if glitches are used to accomplish the 100% so long as all necessary completion criteria to meet a true 100% run are performed (glitch or not).
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Dwedit wrote:
So does this mean a glitchless run is not allowed in Vault?
Correct. Vault does not allow goals that consist in forgoing use of known glitches or tricks.
The Vault rule is very simple:
Vault wrote:
Goal choice is limited to fastest completion time (any%), or full-completion (such as 100% or best ending)
Wait...doesn't this mean that multiple goal choices are valid for vault runs? Why can't there be both a glitched and non-glitched run in vault?
EDIT: Unless you are claiming a glitched any% version is better than a non-glitched any%....that I agree with.
But I don't agree that a glitched any% should obsolete a non-glitched 100% or full completion run.
Editor, Experienced Forum User, Judge, Published Author, Expert player
(2094)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1029
Location: US
warmCabin wrote:
You don't suppose doing the minigames could be considered a goal or category? "Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs," maybe?
Don't get me wrong, I'd be thrilled to see this run published in any tier! I'm just curious when something stops being a category/goal and starts being trivial and stupid.
Speed/Entertainment trade-offs are typically intentional time losses to add entertainment value to a run. The mini-games of Pictionary are perfect examples. The big question is 'Are they entertaining enough?'
As this game isn't vault eligible anyway (because board games as a genre are considered trivial), the 'speed/entertainment trade-off' tag is moot. Entertainment must be the primary goal; speed becomes a secondary means of attaining the entertainment goal.
The only hope a run of this game has of being published is attaining a high enough entertainment response from the forum voting/comments. Whether or not this is even possible can only be determined by submitting and letting the whims of the community decide.
Doing anything with the mini-games may garner a more positive response than outright skipping them, but I doubt the choice between failing or completing them will make much difference in the overall opinion/voting.
(I intend to give the codebase a look at some point to make up for it anyway. I don't like wasting your time)