TASVideos

Tool-assisted console game movies
When human skills are just not enough

Adelikat

Introduction

I am a Tool-assisted speedrunner and an administrator of TASVideos. I have been a member of this site since 2005, and have contributed numerous TASes, and publications, as well as maintaining TASVideos' existence. In addition I contribute to the development of many rerecording emulators.

According to Humanmetrics I am an iNTj. (I don't normally take personality tests but I was bored.)

Subpages of adelikat:
>> Adelikat / All Platforms Challenge
>> Adelikat / Empty Queue
>> Adelikat / Movies
>> Adelikat / Movies Commentary
>> Adelikat / Ratings
>> Adelikat / Site Vision

Table of contents [expand all] [collapse all]

Completed TASes

  • List
    • A detailed list of TASes I've made including publications, submissions, obsoleted movies, and WIPs
  • Commentary
    • Written and/or Video commentary of the TASes I've made. These are more from a personal perspective and not the technical aspects of the TAS. The commentary focuses on things like "why" I made the TAS, the difficulties I had, what else I was working on at the time, etc. They also give a basic history of my earlier TAS life.

Active TAS Projects

I keep all my TAS related work in a code repository on Google Code. Anyone familiar with using SVN can access all my WIPs and related files. I update the SVN after every TAS session I do so it is always the latest and up to date versions of all my movies. Moving to this style of TASing puts all my work completely in the public which I've come to really enjoy. I believe that the collaboration and sharing of knowledge is a huge advantage to the art of TASing.

Anyone who doesn't know how to use SVN can still get downloads from that link for all my submissions. These include the submission files but also lua scripts, memory watch files, and savestates that I used in making the TAS.

Site Responsibilities

Admin

As of July, 2009, the site was transferred to Nach and I. As an admin, I am the primary contact person for TASVideos. I guess I am also in charge of the general direction of the site, and the overall decision maker. Any questions, complaints, needs, arbitration, bug reports should go to me, in a forum Private message.

Coder

I participate in the coding of the website and maintaining of the database. This includes new site features, bugs, and other maintenance issues.

I have contributed to the development of many rerecording emulators supported on this site. My main concern is keeping them up to date on a repository, providing information/tasks for others to easily join the project, and maintaining rerecording related tools.

I am currently the main developer of FCEUX

In addition I am a developer of GENS, DeSmuME, Yabause, VBA-rr, SNES-rr, PCSX-rr, FBA-rr, PCSX2-rr, mednafen-rr, and FCEU.28.

I hope to also contribute by adding/refining rerecording tools to currently unTASable emulators.

I also hope to make good progress on the FCEUX dialog EmulatorResources/TASEdit. This dialog's goal is to overhaul the way in which TASers make their movies. The hope is to then port it to any emulator.

Publisher/Encoder

As a publisher, I can currently encode/publish submissions of all the current rerecording platforms, NES, SNES, SMS, GENS, GB, GGC, N64, DS, and GBA.

Judge

I am an active judge on this site. However, I try to delegate this responsibility to the other active judges whenever possible in order to focus on other site activities.

As a judge, I try to look at all submissions in queue and try to give some feedback, even games that I am not familiar with. I try to prioritize and give older submissions priority.

The things I look for when judging a submission's fate:

1) The most important thing I look for is if the game is suitable for TASing. By this, I mean that it requires some tricks/glitches/strategies in order to optimize it. Basically, the optimal solution must not be blatantly obvious, such as simply running to the right and hitting the level exit. The more complex the process of optimization the more likely I am to be interested in it.

2) In addition to having surprised, it must not get repetitive. Such as if all levels require the same "solution", if all levels and/or bosses look the same, or if the same technique is used relentlessly throughout the run.

3) How optimized it is. This is slightly different from saying how perfect it is. I am looking that the author has some sort of mastery over the "craft" of TASing. I.e., they are familiar with the basic techniques of TASing and employ them skillfully. The route is planned out. Known tricks & glitches were used, etc. This criterion also applies to improvements to published movies. If a movie beats a published movie but still has a lot of noticeable flaws or is known to be improvable, I may reject it.

4) Viewer feedback is important, especially when a movie is borderline. However, this is not a democratic system and I have been known to go against the audience. This is usually when the audience response differs from my assessment of 1, 2, and 3.

TODO: Describe in more detail and provide example movies.

I try to delegate this reponsibility to other encoders/publishers whenever possible in order to focus on other site activities. If interested, send me a PM!

Editor

I maintain the emulator information on TASvideos I wrote AVI tutorials I maintain the judge, encoder, publisher, editor guidelines. I try to keep movie pages updated whenever possible.

I have this fantasy of making some nice game resources pages, especially for the games that I have TASed but that looks more and more unlikely. I also would like to make a TASing tutorial one day.

Future TAS plans (No guarantees that I will ever start/finish these!)

  • TMNT v4 - I found yet another improvement that could save about 8 seconds (rough estimate) (plan failed) as well as various subpixel optimizations.

I have gotten up to level 4 and have saved about 1 second and without the trick, I don't anticipate saving much more. Since it is such a small improvement and such a difficult game to optimize, it isn't high on my priority list.

  • X-men 2
    • One of my favorite games for Sega Genesis. I will see if I can improve the current movie somehow.

  • Golden Axe 2 and/or 3
    • Both of these have potential to be as funny and entertaining as the original.

  • Road Rash 2 (maybe 3)
    • It is a crazy idea, but I want to do a 2 player split-screen version of this. Player 1 will aim for pure speed while player 2 goes for a playaround, fights enemies, and does insane stunts/crashes. Player 2 will always get busted or crash out before player 1 finishes. This way the movie is still as fast as possible while still being an entertaining playaround - the best of both worlds. There may be ways that player 2 can help player 1 get faster times as well, perhaps bumping into his bike from behind to boost his speed? Needless to say, this will be difficult to TAS and will require a lot of planning.
    • I am thinking Road Rash 2 because Road Rash 1 doesn't have 2-player split screen and Road Rash 3 has much worse graphics and is longer. Though Road Rash 3 has a much better weapon selection and you can keep multiple weapons and keep them after a track is over. This might make the playaround part much more entertaining despite the worse graphics; so I may decide to do this game instead.

  • SMS Double Dragon 2-Player
    • The SMS version is a lot like the original NES version but with 2-player simultaneous mode, you start out with better abilities, and multiple enemy types on the screen at once. This has great TAS potential.

My favorite TASes

adelikat's recommended movies

These movies are ones I think do a good job showing off the various aspects of TASing. If I were in charge of starring movies, these would be the ones starred. It would also be nice if each one could have some commentary as to what/how they demonstrate the art of TASing.

If you have any comments for me as an admin, player, editor, judge, publisher, or coder, PM me on the forums.


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Adelikat last edited by adelikat on 2010-03-09 18:40:15
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