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zggzdydp:
Can you update your movie to make use of this new trick? Or is the movie not edit-friendly here?
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No Battletoads? :(
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Google is annoying that they keep changing their UI, so whatever documentation I write or update keeps getting out of date. If you're seeing an error that certain details are missing, that generally means an incorrect option was chosen earlier in the process, to generate invalid results.
Try the process again, trying to find the options that seem to most closely match what's in the documentation. Also keep track of what it is, and provide the details if you encounter errors such as these. We can work back once we know what options were selected.
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When replying to something, please press the post reply button in the existing thread, and not "new topic".
If you do not know what your computer specs are, we cannot tell you if it's just your computer.
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If you're going to ask a question like that, it'd be a good idea to also post your system specs.
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Any reason why the RNG isn't seeded consistently at the start, and replacing all time-based RNG lookups to offsets from the current frame count? In other words, keep RNG, but deterministically so.
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Some of the timing and randomness changes are possibly suspect. It has to be deterministic for playback, but actually altering the behavior is questionable. I'll let others weigh in on this what they think.
The Dustforce Script format needs to contain enough to achieve proper parsing without errors. If a submitted run will only contain MOUSE and regular input, it sounds reasonable.
Here's some details on what features TAS tools are expected to have: http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources/Features.html
Here's some details on requirements (including some video dumping details): http://tasvideos.org/EmulatorResources/Requirements.html
Mainly, you want to allow the ability to dump video and audio from the game, into some kind of lossless format. You can allow for writing AVI files which are pretty straight forward. Or, you can allow settings of an application to pipe video and audio to over stdout -> stdin, and let the third party application deal with encoding it.
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henke37 wrote:
It's the fact that you get to format the text. IRC has meh text formatting at best.
IRC doesn't define formatting, that's up to the clients. Some clients are highly configurable, others are not. You can easily make your own client and configure things the way you like it.
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There also needs to be a way to dump video. In video dumping mode, since the speed of the machine isn't really relevant, the question is what gets written to video during those segments, and the video dumping process can normalize it. Like all those segments are 3 seconds of blank or repeated frames. Whatever it is, that info should be present (calculable) from the movie format.
Also, how much does this tool alter the game? How can we be sure of its faithfulness?
Finally, does the movie recording format for this even have a name?
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You'll need to provide sufficient details for those that have zero experience with your game or any knowledge regarding it. As is, your links assume too much prior knowledge, leaving too many questions open.
Is this summary for TAS site parsing correct?
LOAD - Cheating
MOUSE - Ignore
SYNCLOAD - Ignore
All others - Count as frame?
How do frames relate to real time?
When you talk about loading times, is the amount of loading times encountered in the entire game consistent on a single machine. Meaning if I play the game start to finish on machine X, will I have a total of Y loading time every single time? Or does it depend on how it's played? If play itself can affect when there is and isn't load, then the total amount of input is not an indicator of real time finesse in playing the game.
Also, with all this, I don't know what I don't know. What should meta data be informing us of? Are there multiple players at once, and if so, does it matter?
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If you want to test some existing content filtering yourself, here's some free options:
*Symantec DNS
*K9 content filter
Here's some pages where some popular filters describe their practices:
*The JNet ISP
*Convenant Eyes content filter
*Net Nanny content filter
This list is by no means exhaustive nor anywhere near close to it.
Edit:
On a side note, we appear to get a higher "safety rating" (whatever that means) than WP and YT.
TASVideosWPYTimgur
Edit 2:
And here's Speedrun site mentioned above which has low confidence in child safety, in addition to an overall lower rating than us.
Speedrun
Those looking to whitelist based on say a WOT score of child safety >90% and confidence >65%, it's easy to see how we score well compared to other community sites. We certainly do not want to change that.
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If a tools allows runs to be played backed in accordance with our rules, then it can be accepted.
If there is such a tool, provide info regarding it, backing up that it complies with our rules, and allowing our users to review it to ensure that's the case. Also make the format details public so we can implement it into the site parsers. The format itself will need to include details regarding its video-frame length, and indicators if something may not entirely comply with our rules in a particular recording.
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Warp wrote:
I have to wonder on what basis would an ISP block tasvideos.org. It's not a video streaming site. All the videos are on YouTube and other independent streaming sites, not on tasvideos.org.
Whose actually hosting material is often not relevant, it's where the material appears. Some sites are file dumps where you cannot access anything unless you know the URL to it, while other sites actually make that data available in an organized manner. Those making it accessible will often be blocked.
Warp wrote:
If an ISP were to block tasvideos.org for having "inappropriate" content, they would have to block the entirety of YouTube because that's where said content is. Are ISPs really blocking sites that link to YouTube, but not blocking YouTube itself? I have really hard time believing this.
YouTube is being blocked all over the place. Some content filtering tools will allow YouTube though if loaded by flash, just not by the browser proper. This means those embedding YouTube may playback but pages from YT itself cannot be accessed.
Warp wrote:
On what other basis would an ISP block tasvideos.org? Simply mentioning and talking about AO games is not a criterion. If it were, those ISPs would have to block Wikipedia, and all video game review sites (which often even contain self-hosted screenshots, etc.)
Some block Wikipedia too.
Warp wrote:
Unless someone can accurately explain how exactly this goes, I think it's just baseless fear-mongering. If you have an ethical problem with AO games, then say so; don't just use "we may be blocked by ISPs" as an excuse, unless you have actual verifiable evidence that's so, and can explain why it would happen.
Each content filter is different so as a collective, it's difficult to guarantee how this will go. The various content filters themselves are also sometimes arbitrary and based on heuristics and complaints from their customers. I'm not sure what kind of evidence you want as to what practices are. You want links to content filtering pages? You want to see a filter that blocked Wikipedia?
Some will block entire sites that distribute community-based content, and for those, there's no hope for us anyway, we're surely blocked. However, those that are more reasonable with humans reviewing things will review a site to find out what its community rules are. If they see our rules forbid adult content, and a cursory glance show we enforce those rules, we will not be blocked. Heuristic based real-time scanning is more problematic, and even a discussion like this may cause issues, but will often place such blocks solely on our forum, not the main site as the forum is blocked from robots, and thus will not load for them nor their users.
Our published videos are those easy to find for humans that review our sites, and are where our focus of course needs to be. Of secondary importance is those found in submissions or user pages, as while less organized and hard to find, automatic scanners will come across them.
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TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
I believe a site admin or Senior Judge is the type of person that would need to make judgement on this. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask, as I understand making an exception to these types of things is not done very often.
Our rules are the same regardless of the system or game in question. There are no per-game exceptions to allow for a (near)complete disregard for our rules. Whatever playback software is used, it must achieve the playback quality we expect. If it doesn't, other more accurate or capable tools will need to be created.
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
What that means is we can currently only TAS the Individual Levels of the game.
Individual level TASs are not allowed.
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
What this means is that if we were to complete a TAS of the game, as we are currently able to do (eventually, still lots of work to be done) we would have the entirety of it saved in these fake replays as segments. From there, a spliced video file, made from these segments, could be created.
Individual level TASs are not allowed.
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
There is an overworld, and the gameplay of the overworld is the same to the gameplay inside of levels. We can use the game's Level Editor in order to copy the overworld and turn it into a Custom Level, and then we can create a fake replay, using the composer again, in order to TAS the overworld movement. This is not ideal, but the functionality of it exists.
Individual level TASs are not allowed.
Also at this point, the playback of each of these levels now comes into question, as to how accurate it is when taken out of the main game. Therefore, again, individual level TASs are not allowed.
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
My questions are mostly focused around a theoretical future date, in which the game has been completely optimized, but Hourglass still does not work with the game. How would/should we go about making a submission to tasvideos?
Fix Hourglass or create other tools which can achieve TASVideos rules.
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
I don't know what that page is supposed to show. The playback of each of these levels is in question, as to how accurate it is when taken out of the main game. Therefore, again, individual level TASs are not allowed.
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
These segments will sync for any computer that is powerful enough to run the game without lag, and matching the OS used to create the replay (Windows is what we use currently, Linux and Mac versions of the game that attempt to watch those replays made in Windows may desync in places)
The fact that different machines and OSs cause different results all the more enforces that levels taken out of the main game context are also different results.
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
I understand this is a somewhat unique and unconventional situation to be in, especially for myself as I have not made any submissions to tasvideos before.
There's nothing unique about this, many games do not currently have a way to create TASs for them which comply with our rules.
BrotherMojo wrote:
To be completely honest, a vanilla game would probably play back the inputs properly. Not as in "we're pretty sure that it works the same," but "there's unpredictability in the vanilla game."
Dustforce as a game was designed with a lack of randomness in mind. In theory, everything should happen the same way every time if you use the same inputs.
This is contradicted by:
TheBirdOfPrey wrote:
These segments will sync for any computer that is powerful enough to run the game without lag, and matching the OS used to create the replay (Windows is what we use currently, Linux and Mac versions of the game that attempt to watch those replays made in Windows may desync in places)
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SmashManiac wrote:
Nach wrote:
Posting videos of AO games anywhere on the site is enough to have various content filters (Microsoft, Symantec, "safe" ISPs, and others) to ban the entire site. Posting videos of M games will fly under the radar of most content filtering and not ban the entire site.
I'm not sure how much of that fear is justified. For example, speedrun.com's Manhunt 2 page lists multiple speedruns of the PC version of the game with direct video links. As far as I know this has not caused any major problems for them.
How do you know there's not any problems? Has anyone even checked the various content filters to see if they're blocked?
My day job involves supplying various services to educators who sometimes deal with various content filtering. I often hear from them details you would never guess unless you regularly used filtering of this sort yourself. Banning of complete domains over an offending image or video displayed somewhere on the site is unfortunately not an uncommon experience.
Even if a site isn't currently blocked, it just takes one parent to complain to their safe ISP or filter software, supplying a justification, and the company in question will take down an entire site just to be safe.
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Probability of each bit is the wrong question.
You need to know the relationship of each bit. Some may be mutually exclusive at the power on state.
Please see: Wiki: Nach/MemoryInit.
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Unless the enemies are killed in the most entertaining way possible, the run probably will not find much interest here.
Mario himself will also have to progress as quickly as possible while killing all the enemies.
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I will strongly reiterate there will be no migration from IRC to Discord nor any other fad. However, for those that want to use Discord, we now offer a channel there. Further, we are not making any guarantees to any kind of long term maintenance and upkeep of the Discord channel nor the bot there.
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The tools to determine what start up state for particular RAM cells is exists. No one is actually working on investigating and documenting it to my knowledge.
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That was one of the runs I was referring to when I mentioned existing policy with rejecting/cancelling runs like these.
feos wrote:
the rule was just a result, to make all the future occasions like this clear (I guess?).
Yes. Although, it is an extension of existing rules such as "Clear SRAM" or similar.
Presetting RAM with a so-called random state allows players to beat a game in under a second if that's what they were aiming for, and is generally much worse than only setting the SRAM component of memory. It might as well be a save state, except some want to make believe it isn't, since you know the values were "randomly" selected. From there, it's only a matter of how much a player disguises it.
With the added line to the rules, we're clarifying this. Unless the state as a whole is proven to be possible, we're not going to accept runs that tweak bytes specifically for some kind of advantage.
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The rule that is clearest was cited. The rule clarifies other rules as applicable to the case at hand and existing policy.
It's not unfair because we've rejected/cancelled similar runs in the past. Even if not, we're free to institute new rules as new cases demand them.
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SmashManiac wrote:
Thank you very much Mothrayas for sharing why you created that rule; it makes for a very good base for a discussion.
It's not open for discussion. You can discuss it, but it's not going to change.
Warp wrote:
To me it looks like the difference between M (17+) and AO (18+) is quite fuzzy at times. The latter seems to be stamped onto a game only because of rather subjective controversy, rather than there being a clear definitive standard that clearly delineates the difference between the two.
The age part of T, M, or AO is really a suggestion. Many parents have no issues with their child playing an M game if they're say 14+.
Warp wrote:
I suppose that what I'm saying is that if the principle is "M-rated games are ok but AO-rated games are not", the argument cannot be "to make the site child-friendly" because neither type of game is.
There's a larger issue. Posting videos of AO games anywhere on the site is enough to have various content filters (Microsoft, Symantec, "safe" ISPs, and others) to ban the entire site. Posting videos of M games will fly under the radar of most content filtering and not ban the entire site.
As Mothrayas put it above, there's no stigma associated with M like there is with AO.
henke37 wrote:
We have a custom system. It is easy to add a field in the database to track the rating of games. It's no challenge to filter out adult titles by default.
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dwangoAC wrote:
under certain case-by-case situations it may make sense to add labeling to the encoding and disclaimer screen shown in encodes.
I like this idea.
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I just want to add that I strongly agree with Mothrayas here. We have many children visit the site and some of our finest members are quite young. Our site is meant to cater to the whole of the gaming community, and not be restricted to adults. Therefore, it is best not to publish content not suitable for children.
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