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Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
feos wrote:
Er, what? Look at the encode of the movie I linked maybe? It tells everything about the current topic.
Yes, based on the encode of your movie that you provided, if that was considered as the entire movie for judgment, it should be rejected as everyone till now has mentioned.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Please keep the thread on topic, and not reference unrelated concepts.
Also, if you want to argue for the rejection of your own movie, please just use the cancel button instead. Thank you!
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Patashu wrote:
Would the official encodes of this TAS cut the video after wave 9 ends, or after game over?
Well, the precedent set with previous runs of multi-wave games to my knowledge have ended the encode as soon as the last wave with unique content has been completed. So it should cut it as soon as wave 10 appears on the screen.
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derula wrote:
Not a great fan of the way you ended input, seems like there would have been tons of time to lose all the extra lives during the game so the game over would have occurred very shortly after end of input, without losing time...
The run was already complete once all 9 unique waves were completed. What comes after is no longer relavent to the run. There is no need to lose any lives, there is no game over, no time once wave 10 is reached is counted.
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<Spikestuff> so
<Spikestuff> punch
<Spikestuff> my
<Spikestuff> monitor
* Nach punches Spikestuff right in the monitor
<Spikestuff> I DON'T HAVE A MONITOR
* Zeupar round-kicks Spikestuff in the middle of the potato
<Spikestuff> I DON'T HAVE THAT EITHER
* Spikestuff punches Zeupar in the face
<Zeupar> As long as you don't hurt my feos, I'm good %^)
Edit:
Afterwards:
<TASVideoAgent> New reply by Nach (OT: Memorable IRC Quotes.): http://tasvideos.org/forum/p/386359#386359 [a:1] (More violence)
<Spikestuff> Wait he had a feos still?
* Spikestuff punches Zeupar in the feos
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Derakon wrote:
I don't have a wiki-capable account
Fixed, please help out.
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We definitely need to be improving and expanding that page, as most players have no clue how to achieve this.
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Kurabupengin wrote:
Can I play it?
You want to play a game which is under development and barely playable?
Also, why are you looking forward to a game which you know nothing about, not even the genre?
If you're just interested in playing some game because it's made by Nach, then there's Maze Master (instructions and discussion) which is one game I told people about that I made which you can play right now.
Kurabupengin wrote:
Or its just the actual TASing thing for Windows? I'm all confused right now...
The "TASing thing" for Windows is HourGlass, and no, that's not a game.
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I'd like to thank those who posted in this thread in giving criteria and discussing concepts for what is considered executing arbitrary code and what isn't.
I reviewed all your input, and extracted from it the crucial concepts that were discussed that had considerable logic to back it up. From amidst the discussion, it was quite interesting to see what ended up being the distilled key points. Please see: Wiki: Nach/ArbitraryCodeExecution.
Thank you all!
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HHS wrote:
I'd say that the number of games that run on SQL
It's quite popular in cell phone games these days.
SQL is also probably used way more in games than you might think. It's not like they advertise that they do so.
HHS wrote:
allows the player to inject SQL
SQL injections is still one of the most common bugs in existence. If a game is running on SQL, programmed poorly, merges some input somewhere from a user, SQL injection possibilities are quite likely.
HHS wrote:
contains code to filter out certain SQL statements
Again another common SQL practice is to prevent certain categories of functionality to be locked out.
HHS wrote:
and display "You - SQL" in the credits is quite low.
I asked if it should do that, I didn't announce that it does so.
HHS wrote:
And even if all the details posted in this thread are completely made up, the same arguments apply to any game that is found to have an intentional backdoor if such a backdoor is used in a TAS.
Which still doesn't justify referring to this thread as an announcement for some game.
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Samsara wrote:
Okay, if you want to get pedantic, it's not an announcement. It's just public information.
Public information about what exactly?
Samsara wrote:
take your idea to its logical conclusion
What idea?
That some vague details should be used to disqualify some random game from using a certain technique.
Samsara wrote:
All I said was that you just told a group of people that you're making a game that may or may not include an intentional exploit. Where did I imply that every Windows game has this intentional exploit?
You wrote:
Samsara wrote:
and plays the game when it's released is going to know that there's an intentional ACE-like exploit
What you're saying can be understood in one of two ways:
1) Somehow people are going to magically know which game this is regarding, so they'll know it has an ACE-like exploit.
2) People now know there is some game out there which contains an intentional ACE-like exploit, and therefore every game which meets the criteria discussed in this thread (Windows game) must be suspect.
Since people magically knowing from this thread what is being referred to is illogical, especially considering that the people here have no idea which company the game is being made by, what it's about, or anything else, nor any games I was involved in till now, the second explanation is much more viable, even though that argument also seems absurd, but less so.
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<dwangoAC> dwangoAC: OK, so Space Invaders -
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Samsara wrote:
Nach wrote:
Where has it been announced?
Technically, this thread is the announcement. Anyone who reads the first post (and by definition the rest of the thread) and plays the game when it's released is going to know that there's an intentional ACE-like exploit. Admittedly it's a niche community and could only be a very small fraction of the people playing the game, but it's still there in public.
Announcement for what?
plays the game when it's released
What game?
If I take your idea to its logical conclusion, we much now reject ACE for every single Windows submission, because we can point to this thread and say it's intentional and not ACE.
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HHS wrote:
Even if it is not a game mechanic, there is no question that it is intentional, even just as an easter egg.
How is there no question involved?
As the creator, I know there is no question, but how are regular players out there supposed to know that?
HHS wrote:
The fact that it has been publicly announced, and that there is "validation" code involved, proves that it's a deliberate feature.
Where has it been announced?
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To HHS and others, I think you're missing the point.
I'm not looking to make a certain language as something a user needs to use, and this is how a player plays a game.
I'm purposely adding a back door for those who find it, and it has nothing in the slightest to do with playing the game normally.
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I agree with pretty much everything you said until:
Tub wrote:
Nach wrote:
Also, does it have to be an unintended exploit?
Finding and showcasing unintended exploits is a big part of the fascination of the category. Otherwise, it's no different than programming your own executable and running that, and I think we already have a demo scene for that.
I won't argue whether or not we could still call it ACE, I'm just saying that it wouldn't be publisheable here if it didn't feature a huge exploit. The movies we have all feature a central element: the ability to surprise the viewer. Typing something into visualbasic and then *gasp* running the code? Not very surprising, not interesting, nothing this site would care about.
If the application was being run was visual basic, then no, not very surprising. But if it was a typical game, and someone abused the "enter your name" screen to start typing in a program, even if it was intentionally designed that way, I think it'd still be *gasp*.
I think this point becomes stronger as the built-in exploit is placed somewhere further into the game and completely flies under the radar as an avenue for exploitation.
I also disagree with you that something has to be surprising to be published. I think most runs on this site aren't published for a single moment of shock value, but rather a continuous stream of impressive play.
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I'm not familiar with that.
The example I was thinking of was a web browser game which has an input box somewhere, where the game is expecting a finite set of responses and runs it through eval(). Go beyond that finite set of responses the game is expecting, and you can execute anything, and even add your own code to the game, complete with a brand new debug console of your own creation to modify or add new things on the fly on a whim.
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Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
Why does it have to be machine code? What if a game in an interpretive language, and you can inject code in said language?
I think "arbitrary" implies "anything you want, without limitation". A scripting language will always limit what you can do.
But the game itself would be limited in the exact same manner.
Warp wrote:
I do, however, understand if someone uses it with the meaning "something that wasn't intended by the developers".
There's a lot not intended by the developers that we exploit all the time.
I think the point here is "arbitrary code". Code that wasn't in the game to begin with, and players are adding it and getting it to run.
Warp wrote:
Also, does it have to be an unintended exploit?
If I write a C++ program, compile and run it on this computer, would you consider it ACE? Technically speaking it is, but it's not what's usually meant by the term in the context of tool-assisted speedrunning.
I don't see why it wouldn't be.
Where is our definition for TASs? I don't recall anyone ever precisely defining what it means, nor is it at Wiki: Glossary.
Edit:
Patashu wrote:
Wouldn't that be better called 'memory corruption' or 'memory editing'? ('data corruption' and 'data editing' if you prefer.) In pokemon RBY you can use the expanded inventory to meddle with things like the destination of the exit of the building, but that's not ACE unless you actually modify something that is later executed as code (or an equivalent effect like ROP/hijacking metaprogramming/self-rewriting code)
It is being executed as code. Just not the primary code.
Unlike just plain memory corruption, one is actually adding new code to the game, not just directly modifying some memory somewhere.
Also, in light of what you're saying, for my interpretative language game example I mentioned earlier, you would consider that "arbitrary code" if you get it to run your own?
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Derakon wrote:
The key word here is arbitrary -- that implies that you must be able to make the program do anything (that the computer is physically capable of doing of course).
Anything?
Is not being able to alter the stats of all the enemies, how many spawn, items, etc... not enough? You can arbitrarily change those things as long as it doesn't fail any constraints.
Derakon wrote:
Being able to perform SQL injection attacks is all well and good, and I think it's awesome that you're intentionally leaving in exploits like that
We're not leaving in such an exploit, we're creating the exploit altogether. We have to go out of our way to have an SQL statement directly use user input.
Derakon wrote:
but unless the game is retrieving code from the SQL server and executing it, I don't think it really qualifies as ACE.
Embedded SQL.
Game maps, enemy data, items, and more is all in the database, with the game engine using all of it to do what it does. True you can't change the engine itself, but you can very much alter what it's doing.
Warp wrote:
ACE makes most sense in the context of a closed platform where a regular user cannot normally input and execute any kind of machine code at all, under any circumstance (except through unintended exploits).
Why does it have to be machine code? What if a game in an interpretive language, and you can inject code in said language?
Also, does it have to be an unintended exploit?
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I'm part of a team creating a Windows game (HourGlass!), and we had an interesting thought. We're going to make part of the game run on SQL, and intentionally allow for a way to do SQL injection in certain in-game interfaces. However, since we don't want the game utterly destroyed, it's going to be filtered to block DROPs and other really nasty things. Basically allow one to run arbitrary UPDATEs to do interesting things within the game engine itself.
Would a TAS which makes use of this intentional built-in exploit be considered executing arbitrary code? It's not so arbitrary, because it's filtered to an extent, and it's only the SQL code used for managing some data, not the primary game engine code. On the other hand, you can write practically any SQL statement consisting of approved functions.
We're also debating as to whether we should make it obvious to the exploiter that this is intentional or not. We thought perhaps a remark in the ending credits if you do hack in your own SQL like so:
Programmers:
Blah - Levels
Ring - Physics
John - Enemies
Dave - Graphics
Jim - Sound
Nach - System
You - SQL
Should we or shouldn't we alert the player at some point?
Thoughts?
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So, Tompa, going to submit your run?
Or do you guys want to work together and make a better run?
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Just a reminder to everyone, when you upload to userfiles, you can set the movie to hidden. This way no one can see it unless you send them the link.
You can later edit your movie to make it unhidden at the end of the competition.
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<Spikestuff> so feos you going to feos your feos to feos the fe?
<feos> wtf
* ForgoneMoose kicks Spikestuff right in the Mothrayas
<feos> Aktan
<Spikestuff> Incorrect ForgoneMo- oh right I'm the one with the Mothrayas
<Spikestuff> while everyone else has a feos
* Spikestuff punches ForgoneMoose in the feos
<ForgoneMoose> uhh... most people have their feos behind their Nach, moron
<ForgoneMoose> you were practically hitting my Patashu
<Spikestuff> EVERYONE HAS A FEOS
<Spikestuff> BUT ME
<Spikestuff> baka
<ForgoneMoose> i have what is known as a migrant feos you see
<Spikestuff> goooooooooooooooooooood
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<Nach> FluffyTheMoth: In your estimate how much faster you think this run can be?
<FluffyTheMoth> FluffyTheMoth: the Platinum run?
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