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That sounds good.
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Randil wrote:
Nach wrote:
But in Duck Hunt, would a video show any more than some birds dropping as soon as they appear on screen?
This is exactly what a "fastest possible" run would look like (see my youtube video here to get the idea). Let's say that, in theory, I submit a Duck Hunt TAS, what do you think the goals should be? Fastest time to beat X levels? What should X be in this case? Should it perhaps sacrifice time to kill birds as late as possible, just for variaton?
Well, just shooting them down instantly is rather boring, I doubt anyone wants to sit through more than one round of it. The only thing I can think of that would make this really entertaining is killing the dog, which many of the older crowd on this site would love to see. But that's not going to happen.
There's also shooting the clay to consider.
I think a TAS which kills all the birds instantly in round one, then resets the game switches to the clay and kills them instantly too won't be long enough to really bore anyone. What it would do however, it would serve as an excellent video demonstrating the power of TASing to people who aren't so familiar with the concept. This would be a TAS which we can say is flawless, and further, anyone can make an identical TAS without much effort! So people can get a feel for what TASing is all about.
We don't have entrance exams for people looking to become a member, and start TASing and submitting their work. However we could say something along the lines of: "Till you master TASing (rerecording, frame advance, memory lookup) enough so that you can make a flawless run of Duck Hunt, don't even think about making TASs".
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Hi.
I was kindly alerted to checkout this thread the other day, so I will.
Note, I've made many changes to this site since adelikat and I took it over from Bisqwit, some obvious, yet others, and probably most of them are behind the scenes.
This here, is something I'd like to cover too, but many other things are much higher priority at the moment. However, we'll get to it eventually.
arkiandruski wrote:
Can we please make the standard naming format on input files game name first. It makes them much easier to find when I want to watch them.
Several users have sent me private messages on the forum or over IRC to point out several issues with the current system. Let me enumerate them.
1) Submissions are hard to sort through when having a bunch of them, because they're just numbers.
2) Published movie emulator formats are hard to sort through because naming of the game isn't always consistent.
3) Published movie torrent files are hard to sort through because the naming isn't always consistent.
4) For both types of formats, we don't include system information, which also makes it hard to know which system the run is for. Look at games such as Tetris, Battletoads, Lemmings, Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, and others for realizing this can be confusing when lacking system info. This will only get worse as people TAS more games on systems outside the main ones usually TAS'd (NES, SNES, Genesis). As well as when older classics will be ported further to the Nintendo DS, or we add support for more platforms to TAS.
5) For both types of formats, we don't list the movie publication number, so a user who got a movie has to search a bit, and possibly even get mixed up when trying to comment on the run he just saw or rate it. This is especially confusing when the same author TAS'd the same game multiple times, with obsoletions and multiple routes.
6) The two formats don't use a consistent naming scheme.
7) For emulator format, game name isn't first making it hard to sort.
8) Route labeling, and other run differentiation labeling isn't consistent.
9) Torrents include the video files but don't include the emulator, not making it truly open source.
Some of these issues are a tangent to the main one, but they're all related and should be fixed together. Fixing some of this will also requiring some site modification first to work, more on that later.
Warp wrote:
If we are going to rename the files to a consistent standardized format, maybe it would be a good idea to add the publication date as well.
I don't think we need to add a publication date once we have the movie number in it. The movie number is more important to include as per #5 above. Do you think in light of this we need the date as well.
Derakon wrote:
Do we need to rename the existing movies? Wouldn't that require resetting every single torrent on the site? Or would we just do the input files?
To full correct this we would have to reset every torrent, so ideally, we're going to get this right the first time.
arkiandruski wrote:
I'm working on renaming the movies on the site so far so we can have at least something.
Whatever we do decide on, please don't waste time doing things manually, we can pretty easily write a script to automate what we want.
Warp wrote:
arkiandruski wrote:
I still haven't found a good file hosting site (and a lot of the others I tried were being stupid.)
That's one thing which puzzles me. There are several websites which offer completely free video hosting services, no strings attached, no hoops to jump through, direct linking allowed (well, kind of, in the form of html embedding), and videos are certainly very large in size. However, try to find just a regular file hosting service with no hoops or other idiotic conditions... I wonder why is that.
The videos can display advertisements. Even if they don't, while you're watching the video on their site, you see the ads surrounding it.
For downloading files, you download it and you're done. You're not kept on the site watching ads while watching the movie, nor does the file itself contain ads. If you can find a solution to these issues, let me know, and we'll start a file hosting service together.
arkiandruski wrote:
So, is there anyone with the ability who's willing to put those files on the site?
Not going to happen as per above.
arkiandruski wrote:
What has to be done to get something to change around here?
Solve all the issues as above, and it also has to wait on us improving the backend a bit.
To have a torrent file have the proper movie number, it has to be inserted by the site code as it publishes the movie, since only the site truly knows which number is next. Currently our publishers have to upload the torrents, which is a show stopper.
I'd like to change how we do things, so that encoders will FTP the movie files to our site (and also offer a private fast download area for judges and publishers), then a publisher only has to select which encode to use for a movie, and the rest becomes automatic. The site will make the torrent files with the appropriate movie numbers, and sideload the movie file to archive.org, and elsewhere as appropriate.
That's obviously not done yet, so this change will have to wait a bit.
arkiandruski wrote:
For example, does everyone agree that it should be game name first author name last? That's a good place to start.
Nope, I think system name has to be first. Followed by game name. Last should be movie number. With the author(s)'s name somewhere in the middle with which version of theirs it is.
arkiandruski wrote:
Do we want to avoid spaces and capitals like in the current naming convention?
Avoid spaces, yes.
arkiandruski wrote:
Game name first is the most important. The big discussion here is whether to use the U.S. name for all games, preserving the obsoletion chain even after version switches, or to use the rom name (for example: will we use "bioniccommando" for all of those games, or call some of them "hitlernofukkatsu").
No one has brought this problem directly to my attention, but I think it's a good point, and part of keeping game name consistent.
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Kitsune wrote:
Does this hack require TASing to beat, or could I beat it in real time without any tool assistance?
Looks like fun.
I beat the entire game all exits without TASing it. I got another 3 friends interested in it who also did the same (one of those friends however abused save states for practically every jump throughout the game - but he sucks at Super Mario World too).
I must say that some of the later levels were rather grueling though.
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Randil wrote:
Don't worry, I won't submit a Duck Hunt run or anything - I realize and agree that it's really not publish-worthy. Still, perhaps some people will enjoy seeing a Duck Hunt TAS - either way, you can't stop from making one and posting it in the forum! :)
I don't think we're against the idea of a short TAS for a repetitive game that doesn't have much of an ending. See Urban Champion for an example.
Duck Hunt is also a classic, so perhaps someone would like to see a TAS for it, so it should be publish worthy.
But in Duck Hunt, would a video show any more than some birds dropping as soon as they appear on screen?
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Kyman wrote:
andymac wrote:
Maybe we could assign some kind of bounty points
I think this is a good idea, and then we could have an award for the best bounty hunter of the year.
The award could look something like this:
No, the award would clearly be an Olympic podium with Samus in the center, and Captain Falcon and Boba Fett on either side.
Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
What system do you propose?
How about this:
Any published run which meets these two criteria:
1) Has been published over a year ago, and
2) presents any of these problems:
- does not comply with the site rules,
- is speed-oriented, but there's a regular speedrun that is faster,
- would clearly not be accepted if submitted today (for some definition of "clearly")
will be included in (or nominated for) a yearly reconsideration poll.
Just an idea for more precise rules. Fine-tune as needed.
I think this is on the right track.
What saddens me though in all this is how pathetic we are compared to the rest of the internet. On other sites, when an argument comes up along these lines, within the first few days of arguing, an individual will come along and provide a full solution which supersedes the argument. As an example see how GIT started.
How come in all this time of arguing no one posted at least a WIP improving some of the games we're talking about?
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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
I'd rather see them obsoleted by a new movie.
I think everybody agrees with that. The problem is, as has been mentioned, that nobody is obsoleting them.
Perhaps then we need to provide incentive to do so.
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mmbossman wrote:
Nach wrote:
I'm not so sure about the other ones.
Hence the discussion, as well as the recommendations to have the submissions rexamined. If people want to keep them, they'll stay.
My point is, I don't like the idea of unpublification of whole movies which comply with our site more or less.
I'd rather see them obsoleted by a new movie. At most we label them.
But of course if we have a system, we would have each movie in question reexamined.
In summary: I'm fine with removing the one level demos. As for the others, I'm fine with labeling them in a special way, based on community discussion, but I don't want to see them unpublished.
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adelikat wrote:
Nach wrote:
Warp wrote:
Someone already suggested doing the same as with the submissions which were saved from the grue to the re-evaluated, but in this case it would be the reverse. That doesn't sound like a completely bad idea to me.
Yes, but how do we select the movies which need to be reevaulated it?
Low scores in ratings? Just a judge's say so?
Do we need to have this conversation here? If we have a system for "unpublication" that the people can agree to, then we can easily hammer out the details of how a movie meets criteria. Such a system is rather obvious anyway: A combo of age, ratings, and discussion.
Well if this discussion is only about obsoleting by a phantom movie, then I wholeheartedly object for the reasons I states above.
I thought this discussion was about what to do as alternatives to a phantom movie, and what would warrant it...
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The one level demos I think stand out well because they really make no sense.
I'm not so sure about the other ones. I'm in favor to leave them with nothing more than some sort of "we want this obsoleted" marker on it.
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Warp wrote:
Someone already suggested doing the same as with the submissions which were saved from the grue to the re-evaluated, but in this case it would be the reverse. That doesn't sound like a completely bad idea to me.
Yes, but how do we select the movies which need to be reevaulated it?
Low scores in ratings? Just a judge's say so?
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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
The point in the argument is that we have no quantification setup for this obsoletion idea.
Lots of things here can't be precisely quantified, but they don't need to. That's why we have a voting and a judging system: To overcome that problem. How do you quantify, for example, whether a submission is worthy of publication? You can't. That's why there's a voting and judging system in place. Just because you can't quantify it doesn't mean it can't or shouldn't be done.
Now you're saying exactly what I just said.
"We have a process for publishing movies, what process would there be for unpublishing, that someone finds one frame where it can be improved?"
Notice, it's a question.
Also notice the bolded part, what system do we use? There has been no talk as of yet how it would work exactly. Now you mention voting and judging. Okay, does that mean each movie has to be periodically reviewed? What system do you propose?
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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
We have a process for publishing movies, what process would there be for unpublishing, that someone finds one frame where it can be improved? We'd be effectively opening the door to flush every movie down the drain.
Yes, I can see how a movie being improvable by 1 hour is the exact same thing as a movie being improvable by 1 frame. Completely equivalent, and both should be retroactively rejected, yes.
Why does this same pattern of "logic" always ensue in this type of discussions? Someone makes a suggestion and then someone else will invariably and without fail present a completely ridiculous slippery slope argument to counter it.
The slippery slope argument is not valid, has never been valid and will never be valid. Especially when it's so over the top and exaggerated as this one. (The difference between 1 hour and 1 frame is something like 5 orders of magnitude, which could just as well be astronomical in this context.) Please stop using it. It just doesn't work.
The point in the argument is that we have no quantification setup for this obsoletion idea. Until there is one, 1 frame is exactly equal to 1 hour as well as 100 hours.
If there is some method which can quantify it however, then you would be correct.
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I think this idea in general is horrible.
We have a process for publishing movies, what process would there be for unpublishing, that someone finds one frame where it can be improved? We'd be effectively opening the door to flush every movie down the drain.
fruitbane wrote:
Rather than obsoleting, maybe there could be an icon or flag, like the star for starred runs, that indicates that it is known the run can be improved but simply hasn't been. Maybe a ripe fruit icon indicating the run is ripe for obsolescence. This, too, would preserve the history. It's just one extra metadata element/field in a database.
CtrlAltDestroy wrote:
Personally, I think a much better implementation would be to add a new movie category called "Stale" or "Improvable by a large margin".
I can agree with these two sentiments. I think they're more sensible, than obsoleting by a fake movie.
However, the whole idea is a can of worms. If we get a substandard submission, why don't we just publish it as known improvable right off the bat, instead of rejecting it?
adelikat wrote:
This method offers a few advantages.
#1 it keeps the history chain in tact
Does it? Only in light of #4, but has to be manually updated in a separate form, which might as well be forgotten about, as it's an obsoleted movie.
adelikat wrote:
#2 obsoletion is currently coded as an "obsoleted by" system. It needs to be fed something, so this serves as an easy place holder
And there's a ton more to it than that.
The obsoletion system in turns generates hints to Google and other spiders how to index our site.
I made it so that a published movie should appear high in Google, while what it obsoleted should fade into the background.
In terms of using a search engine, this system would effectively make certain games with a TAS obsoleted in this method not appear in search results, leading those searching for us to turn elsewhere.
adelikat wrote:
#3 the publication page would serve as a place to see all movies obsoleted in this manner
How is that a good thing?
We want people to come to some random page, with bogus downloads, and dozens of links elsewhere?
adelikat wrote:
#4 should a movie be obsoleted this way then later improved, it can easily be changed so that the new movie obsoletes it instead.
See my response to #1.
moozooh wrote:
I agree with fruitbane and CtrlAltDestroy wholeheartedly.
Obsoleting movies this way is really no much different from unpublication, because this would effectively open the gates to saying "we don't want this movie here" to any outdated movie the staff doesn't particularly like, retroactively calling their publication a mistake.
I agree with this too. But also see what I said above.
I think we're better with an alternate system which doesn't phantom obsolete or unpublish runs.
Something more subjective may be a system where any movie with >10 voters and is below a rating of 4 is hidden by default. See Slashdot's rating system for example.
Basically, when you browse the site, you browse as seeing all publications over a certain score. You can click a button on the side to lower your standards and see more stuff.
Further, a voting system for requesting an update can be useful. Where we can have players of a certain rank and above vote on which movies they think can be improved and they'd like to see an improvement of (even if they're already of good quality and high rating). And the movie can be marked as such. We can tie it into awards, and offer an award for best obsoletion of anticipated obsoletions, to provide a bit more incentive to do so as well.
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VBA-M is the VBA Merging project, the goal is to merge all the features of various VBA forks into a single latest VBA core build.
I would like to move all improvements of VBA-rr into VBA-M at some point.
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Thank you so much! :)
I really liked Temple of Doom. It was also rather funny what you did to Construction Site. Also, great skip on Mysterious Pyramid. Lastly, I can't even begin to describe how awesome Devil's Rock was.
Nice job so far!
Mister wrote:
Anyway, I need to exit POWER SUPPLY and then the total number of exits will be 55.
Only 55 huh? I guess that means no Power Cats. Oh well.
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I'd like to see a full F-Zero run. I think it's an interesting game to watch.
I find Top Gear to be meh though.
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Flygon wrote:
I'm officially the 2nd most popular TASVideos member.
On Google yes. But not in general.
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arukAdo wrote:
Nach wrote:
Does this game play on a real system that uses this BIOS?
Is the BIOS official?
If the answer is yes to both, I see no reason why we shouldn't allow this run to be published based on the BIOS used.
Because using the 1001 (default one used by ALL our movies) result in different timing, this would be the only reason, else you have to specify in rules you can take ANY bios and its going to be the fuck fest to know what bios is faster than the others, just to whore on few frames
This is just like using the Japanese or US version of the game to try to find which which is faster or whatever. In this case it's even less of an issue, because using a different revision of the US BIOS still leaves the game in English.
sgrunt wrote:
In the future, we should mandate one (I believe it's been brought up on IRC that an exception would be made for this run since there's no official line on the issue at the moment).
Why should we mandate one?
It's even sillier to mandate one realizing that a particular BIOS will fix/introduce some bugs.
Our goal is to show how these games play on real systems sold in stores, when we push them to the limits. Why should we limit ourselves to only one particular model sold in stores?
The only thing we need to mandate is that submissions need to specify which country and revision BIOS they used, and not to use any hacked ones, or one which is known not to play the game in question on a real system.
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ventuz: You alive?
What's going on?
Are you going to cancel this movie and work on an improvement? Are you going to team up with andymac?
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Does this game play on a real system that uses this BIOS?
Is the BIOS official?
If the answer is yes to both, I see no reason why we shouldn't allow this run to be published based on the BIOS used.
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Warp wrote:
I wouldn't call a run which gets into the "TAS of the Year" poll "mediocre" (especially one which seems very liked)...
Of course not. All runs are the same. Everyone is special. We all understand your mentality of not truly awarding anybody, because of jealousy that may ensue.
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Warp wrote:
Maybe we should start awarding silver trophies as well?-)
Right along with Bronze, Pewter, Aluminum, Paramecium, and everything else you can think of.
Here were we strive for excellence, we love rewarding everybody for mediocrity.
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Heisanevilgenius wrote:
The votes for Megaman 2, Chrono Trigger, and Aria of Sorrow are so close, we might need to run another poll of just the three, or just the two highest. What does everyone think? It'd be kind of weird if one of them won by only 1 or 2 votes.
The obvious choice is that none of them win, since there can only be one, and this year, apparently there were more.
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