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It's easy to go to the search bar and type in "Zelda", "Metroid", or "Megaman"/"Rockman", so I don't think that's necessary.
On the other hand, it's not easy to search for a specific type of glitch in that fashion outside of that category.
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Healthy criticism of the TAS is encouraged.
Name-calling and personal attacks of the sort that a handful of people in the thread (and I am not accusing anyone specifically) are engaging is not.
There was a post made here a few moments ago (which the author fortunately deleted) completely unacceptable in that respect.
Keep it to the run itself, not anything to do with the people posting here. You have all been warned, and I will not put up with further unnecessary hostility.
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At the moment, I see arguments being made by/for (at least) three groups of people here.
The first is our mythical general viewer, about whom the general consensus seems to be that will find this run interesting, and who will not see substantial flaws in the run.
On the other end we have our TASers who have worked with the game specifically, who have pointed out deficiencies in route selection, optimisation in individual movement, and a whole host of other flaws of that nature.
Somewhere in the middle is the rest of our community - that is, TASers at large. Here things are a little more tenuous, but my interpretation of the thread to this point (feel free to disagree with me here) is that our average TASer not intimately familiar with the game either also doesn't notice the flaws, or notices said flaws but considers them to be minor.
We're not just publishing this run for viewers in general, or for TASers of this game specifically, or for TASers in general. We are aiming to publish this for all of those groups, and it seems that the consensus is that this run is entertaining enough and technically capable enough to all but the most experienced eyes to be publishable.
The community as a whole has spoken - check out the voting tally at the top. This is not perfect, but it is good enough.
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Having given this some thought, this is what I think:
"Heavy glitch abuse" isn't specific enough for as widespread a tag as it seems to be. Other widespread tags such as "Takes damage to save time" or "Genre: Platform" are specific enough that I can accept most runs using them.
Further subdividing the tag into tags as "Corrupts memory", "Uses zipping glitches" (or something similar), "Sequence breaks"/"Uses glitches to skip semi-important goals" (similar to an old tag), etc. would help people find runs more in line with their personal interest than just a generic "run abuses large bugs / lots of bugs"-type tag.
I could also argue that "heavy luck manipulation" may not fit the threshold of not being specific enough, but I wouldn't know how to subdivide that further.
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ffdshow isn't a software package that is installed by default; you'll need to install it first. Get it from here. (That's the most up-to-date version which has proper support for things like lossless x264.)
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As mentioned over here, the author has put this run up on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yj6blOFJ7ro
Having watched it, I'm reminded greatly of the currently published Mega Man 2 run, demonstrating a high level of expertise in the various glitch techniques (including a couple of unexpected surprises!).
The major argument that could be put against this, I think, is whether it differentiates itself enough from the currently existing Rockman runs to warrant publication. I'm no expert in the games, so I would find it hard to comment on how novel the hack is compared to the other games, but I do enjoy a good glitchfest and this delivers in that respect.
Since I enjoyed watching this, I will vote yes.
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I've normally seen that message only when entering in an incorrect password, but there may be more possible causes than that.
Try using "login" (as opposed to "LogIn") for the login forum - it has been speculated that there might be case sensitivity involved (though there really shouldn't be any impact...)
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Time saved in text isn't considered a particularly useful improvement; it is the in-game time that we care the most about. (To be fair, this has historically been a point of contention on the site, but not for several years.)
Considering our site audience, the accessibility of English text would be more entertaining (and hence more important) than time saved in text from a Japanese version. If there are more compelling reasons to use the Japanese version (such as a glitch which only exists there, for example), then that is a strong argument for it to be used, but "Japanese text saves time" is not an argument which has held up for quite some time.
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Where did this five minutes figure come from? Last I checked, nobody was sure how much time was saved as a result of the shorter length of text boxes, and five minutes seems like an overestimate.
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Slowking wrote:
But the english rom is obviously inferior to the japanese[...]
Please elaborate - it's not at all obvious to me other than the difference in text speed, which is a negligible (at best) improvement timewise.
EDIT:
Since it seems to have gone un-noticed, I'm going to draw attention to MrGrunz's list of flaws again:
MrGrunz wrote:
- first off, the author used a bad route. he also didn't include some of the new tricks. he should have skipped the hookshot and got magic bean as child instead via my zora's river early trick. going to lake hylia to get a bottle is also not the best option for a bottle.
- bad luck manipulation overall. he could have saved a shitload of time at the rupee route. then the peahat superslide was also really suboptimal executed. he even used normal walking in this place
- many bad angles
- even some unoptimized sidehops
- should have gotten more bomb drops in the adult route, so he could have add some crazy stuff like my new "semi-Hyper Endless Superslide" trick or just some more superslides
Can you give a time estimate for how much time could be saved with each of these, and perhaps some specific examples on the "bad angles" and "sidehops" points?
Also, I will point out that it seems to be those people that are most familiar with the game that are picking out flaws of this nature. I'd raise the question of how obvious these are to the average audience; if they are highly visible, I question whether the quality of this is sufficient to meet the standard of publishability. The MM4 case was one where that threshold was obviously met, and it's not 100% clear to me yet that that's the case here.
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I'll add that in the case of MM4, much of the controversy could be attributed to there being known improvements (additional glitches and the like that were not taken into consideration) despite the general standard of play matching or exceeding that of its predecessor.
This is why I'm keen to hear specific criticism of this run; how good or how bad is it in terms of stock game play than Guanobowl's old run?
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Saying more than just "no" or "yes" would be helpful.
Swordless, I'd be particularly interested in your rationale, given your familiarity with the game.
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Personally, I would only be okay with the publication of something of this nature with the knowledge that there is an improved version of the (U) run in the works, which would iron out any of the remaining imprecision here.
It's clear to me that this is well played enough to warrant being published subject to any rule-related decisions.
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Derakon wrote:
Hacks often aren't accepted. Have you cleared the hack with the site administrators? I watched the first two levels of your TAS on YouTube; you seem to have a good grasp of how to TAS, but the hack itself didn't impress me. The levels are filled with enemies but don't have very interesting design, and the bosses don't seem to have changed any beyond graphical tweaks.
It's no longer necessary to have hacks pre-approved. In any case, I would suggest saving further discussion for the submission thread.
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Can you elaborate further on what happens when you attempt to log in at the site? Specific error messages would be helpful if they are there (the cookie bug normally exhibits itself by just returning the same page you were looking at, without error messages or anything of the sort).
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To be fair, the 95 minute obsoletion has nothing to do with using the (J) version rather than the (U) version, and the time saved from using the (J) version is minimal at best.
Plus, as you've just found out, it's a lot harder to keep track of what's going on with Japanese text...
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I'm not in a position to watch the input file at this exact moment, but I will make two comments which will have an impact on the viewing process:
1) This run was first brought to our attention in video form here: http://dic.nicovideo.jp/v/sm10028668 (discussion from the OoT thread starts at http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=229049#229049)
2) There are 36 empty frames at the end of the input file. There is a chance that there is more unnecessary input at the end (without being able to watch the run right now I can't tell), but (assuming this is acceptable to the author) it would be a good idea to remove those and replace the submission file.
In any case, despite having watched the run at the above link, I am withholding any vote until I get the chance to see the run in emulator and we can determine what the time improvement is relative to the most recent unoptimised submission in light of this having been done on the (J) version (in particular how much of the improvement can be attributed to that).
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What exactly is it that you're trying to do?
Pressing the frame advance key advances one frame, taking whatever input you're holding down at the time to be the input for that frame. So, if you want to jump for a certain number of frames, hold down the jump button, tap Frame Advance for that number of frames, let go of the jump button, and continue on from there.
"Holding [jump] down too long" is not something that can ever happen with proper use of frame advance and re-recording.