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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Right after the Sesame Street example, the Vault page states that:
"A serious game which happens to have some secondary educational elements scattered within it are eligible."
So I asked myself:
"is this a serious game with secondary educational elements scattered within, or
is this an educational game with secondary serious elements scattered within?"
I concluded it was the latter.
Let's see
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
feos wrote:
Do you have any more reasons why you think math is the primary gameplay element here? Especially comparing it to the rejectable examples provided by the rules.
No. The only reason why I judged this run as non-applicable for Vault, is because solving math problems is a primary requirement for playing through the game.
This is important. You are aware that regardless of what a real human has to do to beat it, this run
1) explicitly plays against the math rules because abiding them is just slower,
2) completely ignores math rules and breaks through the level physically,
3) manipulates math to give more optimal questions.
This is where I would draw the line between primary math + secondary gameplay and primary gameplay + secondary math: If abiding the math rules is faster, we're not interested in a TAS that simply speeds up what a regular human would do. If abiding math is slower, we're interested in how the TASer resolves this using optimization techniques.
But note that it's not how I compare this game to Elmo, which serves as a triviality reference. It is how I measure the amount of education we want to see TASed.
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
feos wrote:
So far, being impossible to beat for a regular human hasn't been a reason to reject a TAS.
I never stated anything of the sort.
You did:
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
goldenband wrote:
One could blur out all the math elements in Math Blaster and still have coherent gameplay.
Excellent. I have just made a patch that blurs out all math elements in Math Blaster: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xit5qqmg57dl9wk/math-blaster---no-math-version.ips?dl=1
Apply it on the original ROM file by using Lunar IPS, then try playing the game. If you manage to beat the game at least once out of 1 billion attempts, then I'll agree that it "still have coherent gameplay" and rethink of my judgement.
But again, this argument relies on playing this game the intended way. Because you literally can not play it in real time the intended way without seeing the math questions. But this TAS is not even aiming to play it the intended way. Remember this keynote:
WelcomeToTASVideos/Why? wrote:
We make these movies because they are entertaining to watch, and because we are curious how far a game can be pushed. The process of creating them is also a form of problem-solving and challenge to our intellect and ingenuity.
If a child receives a box containing an expensive toy as a birthday present, it's possible that he'll enjoy the box more than the toy. This is creativity. We're doing the same for these games. Instead of walking on the paths created for us, we create our own paths, our own legs and so on. And we're not listening to people who say "you can't do that!". Just like children.
See, I'm looking not just at rules, I'm looking at their spirit too. I try to answer the questions "Why that rule is there?", "What it wants to prevent?", "What it wants to encourage?" And I see that this run fulfills all the requirements of a serious TAS: it applies creativity and counter-intuitive thinking with the TAS tools. If it only used them to beat the game the intended way, just faster, I wouldn't be defending it, and would be right not defending it.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Except that you cannot "discard math" in this game without causing it to became unplayable, at least for a real-time play. The Vault rule that did bring this submission to rejection, is judging the game itself, and not anything about the submitted TAS.
Being unplayable in real time if the math is hidden out is not how the rule defines a rejectable education game either. Do you have any more reasons why you think math is the primary gameplay element here? Especially comparing it to the rejectable examples provided by the rules.
So far, being impossible to beat for a regular human hasn't been a reason to reject a TAS.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Slowking wrote:
Ah thank you. Never knew about this additional way to reach the setting.
Edit: Also I'm a bit of a dummy. It works with my NVIDIA GPU, the crash is with the Intel GPU (Sandybridge). Should I still add a bug report so you guys can make sure it fails a bit more gracefully or is this a case of "why bother"?
Yeah post an issue. And it'd really help if you installed visual studio and tried running the debug builds of bizhawk and gliden, so we could see where exactly it dies.
See below.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Nach wrote:
Although for the viewer to understand what's happening, you have to pay attention to the math?
Since the run mostly shots "wrong" math answers, the viewer isn't likely to understand what's going on without reading the description
Nach wrote:
Knowing the answer is important to determine of the educational bits are primary or secondary.
I'll check tomorrow.
Nach wrote:
While I agree with you we want to discard TASs that don't impress anyone, the point of the vault is to allow publications of TASs which don't impress anyone[1]. Therefore we have strict rules to discard software which isn't real games or too trivial to be taken seriously, or so messed up that some call it a game, but no serious TASer would.
As a serious TASer, I think that this run contradicts the real-time play intuition in all gameplay elements it touches. Breaking a game while speedrunning it is what I look for in TASing.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Nach wrote:
Since I don't know the game nor watched it, let me ask can the player just shoot everything and still win? Because if they can, the math isn't important here.
If you shoot the objects math tells you to shoot, you lose time. If you shoot other objects, you save on time but lose health and eventually die. The author trades as much health as he can on that, this is why he takes an extra life in the menu. Playing the unintended way is faster and results in "Takes damage to save time".
The second level is the same in a way: playing the intended way is suboptimal and should be avoided.
In the third level you can't avoid math entirely, so you manipulate it to give you faster gameplay.
Nach wrote:
feos wrote:
Same as the above, you get a hint where to fly not to die if you do math, but you need to control your character optimally regardless. So again math is just a secondary indicator here. If it was replaced with colors, all the gameplay would remain the same, even though it'd be as basic as on A2600.
Can this be done with just simple trial and error by a regular user till they got it right? If so, I would agree the math is actually secondary to the game play.
I dunno if numbers switch around preventing blind winning;, if they don't change, it's clearly possible in real time.
But regardless, my main point here is that the game has lots of TASable gameplay if you discard math, while Elmo has none. In the end, it's not math itself that we want to avid with Vault rules, but trivial games whose TASes don't impress anyone.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Slowking wrote:
What's the problem with Jabo? It does Majoras Mask nearly perfectly, certainly a lot better than other plugins. Just so we know for the future. Is there anything better one could use?
Why would you think Corey is going through this in the first place? Jabo is not "the least of all evils" anymore. Maybe the version of GLideN64 we're using right now is not as accurate as the one that's just been released, but it's definitely more accurate than Jabo. And easier to encode at the resolutions we want. And open source.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I haven't read that whole page in details lately, but if there's really no definition for a serious/proper game, I'd propose a definition.
A serious game that we want to see published at least in Vault is a game with challenging gameplay that could result in a challenging TAS, involving optimization and applying basic TAS techniques like heavy glitching, heavy resource management, heavy luck manipulation, etc.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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ThunderAxe31 wrote:
If a game has the mandatory requirement to do a lot of Math, we consider it a non-serious game, regardless of what it could seem for someone that never played it.
That's not what the rule says. For clarity of my argument I'll quote it.
For the purposes of this tier, a game which is a board game, educational game or game show game is not defined as a serious game. Examples of unacceptable education games for this tier are Sesame Street: Elmo's 123s and ABCs. A serious game which happens to have some secondary educational elements scattered within it are eligible.
The amount of math involved is irrelevant, and there's no definition of "a lot". There's a definition of "primarily educational game" that we can obtain via provided example. Then when rendering a judgment of a game that's probably educational to some degree, we compare it to Sesame Street: Elmo's 123s to get the basic idea. So let's do this.
Sesame Street: Elmo's 123s is seeing some amount of objects on the screen and picking the digit that equals their quantity. It is decorated in a few different ways, but all gameplay is concentrated in picking the correct digit.
Is, what "picking the correct digit" consists of, serious gameplay? No, it is too trivial to provide any room for TASing. A trained player could arguably learn to do everything frame perfectly. In the end, the result would still be unimpressive and worthless.
Is Math Blaster Episode 1: In Search of Spot as trivial as Sesame Street: Elmo's 123s if we discount all the math matter?
Trash
You need to shoot an object; objects appear around the screen; depending on whether your shooting is correct or not, you either loose time or energy. The correct object appears randomly regarding time and space. If you repeatedly fail to shoot correct objects you die.
This sounds like an average basic game from something like Atari2600 era. Except there you can tell that your shooting is correct by the sprite of the object: it is supposed to look like an enemy. Or something otherwise harmful. In this game, you need to do basic math to know which object to shoot.
My personal opinion is, if you have to fight enemies anyway, and math helps you to make sure you're fighting the right enemy, otherwise you'd have to make random guess each time, math is a secondary factor in such a game. But even that can be totally ignored with some basic luck manipulation: you just shoot random objects and compare your time loss. For real-time play you need to see the numbers. For a TAS you don't care, yet you still have to play the game the usual way. And in addition, there's this optimization factor where you need to plan out your route the way the author did.
Caves
Same as the above, you get a hint where to fly not to die if you do math, but you need to control your character optimally regardless. So again math is just a secondary indicator here. If it was replaced with colors, all the gameplay would remain the same, even though it'd be as basic as on A2600.
But the good thing about this run is that it not only ignores math in this level, it breaks the gameplay entirely by using a physics glitch by frame perfectness and ideal positioning! Primary TAS contents right there ladies and gentlemen. Playing a level based on physics by completely ignoring it.
Ship
This has the least left to it when you discard the math aspect, but it keeps the jetpack physics, and instead of glitching through it requires luck manipulation to make it spawn the optimal math questions, which is determined by which ports we need to enter.
This is clearly TASable. This is unachievable in real time unless one has literal frame perfection and actual luck. Math, just like in the previous level, is just an indicator that might as well be a color or a sprite.
Result
This game has educational elements to it, but its actual gameplay, that remains when you discard math, allows for an optimizable TAS that can even be improved further if some harder glitch is found in the second level. The rule requires that this game only has "some secondary educational elements scattered within it", and it perfectly fits, especially if you compare it to the example game that clearly doesn't.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Does anyone have a screenshot suggestion?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I always prefer sharpness over absolute pixel consistency, unless it results in worse look at anything lower than 4K. No one is zooming 4K as much as we do for comparisons, and it's impossible to see isolated pixels being different. Does the whole picture look different or worse at 4K?
Even if one has a 4K monitor and watches such vids fullscreen, there's still little point in watching them that close to the monitor so you start seeing pixel inconsistency. You're either moving farther from the screen, or you're shrinking the resolution.
I think all the previous tests show that at 720p everything looks equally shitty. And imo, at 4K everything looks equally good. The question is, is one of the methods better when you actually watch the TAS instead of zooming 4 times to stare at gigantic static pixels?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I forgot to explain the usage of
New multisegment import.
The main thing with it is that for HD, it doesn't rescale all the segments to the SD gameplay res before going HD. It upscales each segment separately straight to HD. This includes PSX BIOS screens, SNES hires mode, any other cutscenes that have resolution higher than that of main gameplay. No need for special hacks anymore.
To enable multisegment import, you set ms to true. For it to work you need your emulator to dump you avi segments with numeric indexes appended at the end of the filename. You pick the segment that presents main gameplay for the primary avisource, just don't call the file "movie.avi", let it keep its number. If it's a segment #5, your command will become AviSource("movie_5.avi") or something like that.
Assign proper values to your ms_ variables.
Language: avisynth
ms = true # enable multisegment import
ms_base = "movie_" # common string for all segment names
ms_start = 0 # number of the first segment
ms_end = 13 # number of the last segment
ms_format = "%1.0f" # string format: http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Internal_functions#String
All the parameters of your primary segment will be assigned to all the segments it will import, and when the primary segment goes HD, they will automatically go HD as well.
If the very first segment doesn't have a number attached to it, attach manually the number that should fit if you look at the numbered files and use common sense.
Unfortunately, you can't import more than some 50+ segments within a single script. If you have that many that it refuses to import them all, encode in parts and then splice them together. I won't be explaining it here, because you shouldn't attempt that if you don't know that workflow already.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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LOL that rating.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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During the last 3 months TAS Encoding Package got some huge updates and fixes.
global.bat
The batch can be run from command line, accepting the arguments that it lists when you call it without them.
The batch provides a way to set any aspect ratio before encoding.
The batch prints you help if you type /?
The batch's window caption reports what operation it is doing, and when everything is done, it stays open and says ALL DONE
Subtitles
I tried insanely hard to make vertical positioning between all encodes indentical, regardless of the aspect ratio applied.
Subtitles now try to resize the font if aspect ratio applied is too heavy. This is achieved by using ng_bighalo at resolutions lower than HD. Tweak bighaloCutoff to force it at even lower resolutions. Bitmap fonts that are normally used can't be resized like that.
Extra HQ encodes
The batch allows to do fine-tuned HQ encodes that are upscaled by a desired factor. You can specify several factors in a row, and it will encode with all of them in one go. The factor you chose is in the end appended to the encode filename.
You can now tell encode.avs script to downscale some footage that was captured at higher resolutions. It's needed when you want to make an HQ encode of some 3D game that you captured at HD. You set hq_hiResSrc to true, set hq_baseWidth and hq_baseHeight to the native 1x res, and it downscales the HD footage to the resulting res. Pixelated 2D doesn't need that setup.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Sorry, fixed.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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MICKEY MANIA Creator's Commentary - The Ultimate Let's Play Link to video
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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SMS movie should store the hash of firmware used when it was recorded.
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It's interesting how you almost perfectly guessed.
1. Bizhawk does not work on linux at all. Most Sonic tasers are on linux, running gens via wine, which doesn't run bizhawk either.
2. To port Sonic tools to bizhawk, one will have to fully use lua, and bizhawk's lua is way too slow for intense calculations.
So we either make use of new dotnetcore whenever it becomes usable, and start running bizhawk natively on linux, with all the tools that will then be ported, or we inject a genesis core into an emulator that runs on linux and has sufficient lua support. That is lsnes.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Is it as consistent when you record it in something like NESHawk, which is known to be super accurate? If you succeed, others will be able to fully debug it.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Flash or original cart?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I'm having very little time lately to evaluate the suggestions. Probably I need to start looking for a successor.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Looks like you forgot the alpha channel?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Supporting the "unsupported" games means I will invest all my time into adding savestates to 36530569834950945760948569209350858674987809503948604598763945392486093 cores instead of fixing the ones that call themnselves supported. And don't confuse current and 7yo status.
I'm not planning to improve the current version of mame-rr. I'm trying to make upstream mame useful for sticking it into bizhawk in one form or another.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
