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Decathlon for Commodore 64

Compete through the 10 track & field events of Decathlon for the highest score.
Anyone familiar with NES Track & Field will see similarities.

TAS Notes

  • BizHawk 1.13.0 default settings
  • Game is cartridge version
  • Goal was highest achievable score in the fastest time.
    • Unfortunately you have to wait for the CPU to finish running events which adds some time. While a 2-player game would speed up race events, even scratching out non-timed events with player 2 would take longer than simply waiting for the CPU to finish races.

Run by Event:

100 Meter Dash (Score 1435)
  • In-game time = 8.65 seconds
  • Actual world record = 9.58 seconds (Usain Bolt 2009)
Long Jump (Score 1249)
  • In-game distance = 9.19 meters
  • Actual world record = 8.95 meters (Mike Powell 1991)
  • Instant jumps on attempts 2 & 3 to minimize time spent (faster than running past scratch line).
Shot Put (Score 1260)
  • In-game distance = 23.57 meters
  • Actual World Record = 23.12 meters (Randy Barnes 1990)
  • Immediate weak throws on attempts 2 & 3 to minimize time (faster than running past scratch line).
High Jump (Score 1025)
  • Because there is no option to set initial height on the bar, multiple attempts that clear the bar are necessary for maximum score.
  • In-game max height cleared 2.2 meters
    • I was unable to clear 2.4 meters with any input combinations that I tried. Three immediate miss jumps are done at 2.4m to move to next event (faster than running scratches).
  • Actual world record = 2.45 meters (Javier Sotomayor 1993)
400m (Score 1360)
  • In-game time = 38.90 seconds
  • Actual world record = 43.03 seconds (Wayde van Niekerk 2016)
110 Hurdles (Score 1259)
  • In-game time = 11.55 seconds
  • Actual world record = 12.80 seconds (Aries Merritt 2012)
Discus (Score 1239)
  • In-game distance = 71.55 meters
  • Actual World Record = 74.08 meters (Jürgen Schult 1986)
Pole Vault (Score 957)
  • Because there is no option to set initial height on the bar, multiple attempts that clear the bar are necessary for maximum score.
  • In-game height = 4.6 meters
    • I was unable to clear 4.8 meters with any input combinations that I tried. Three running scratches at 4.8 meters are performed to end the event.
  • Actual World Record = 6.16 meters (Renaud Lavillenie 2014)
Javelin Throw (Score 1210)
  • In-game distance = 100.96 meters
  • Actual World Records (before and after javelin specification changes of 1986 and 1991)= 104.80 meters (Uwe Hohn 1984) & 98.48 meters (Jan Železný 1996)
  • Running scratches used for attempts 2 & 3 to end event.
1500m (Score 1065)
  • In-game time = 3:33.43
  • Actual World Record = 3:26.00 (Hicham El Guerrouj 1998)
Total Score = 12,059 points
  • Actual World Record Score = 9,045 points (Ashton Eaton 2015)

Considerations

This TAS uses joystick inputs for the events. According to https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Decathlon it is possible to achieve a higher total score using something referred to as a keyboard cheat. I was unable to figure out how to use keyboard input for the game and thus was unable to determine if a TAS based on keyboard input method would beat that score or not. This TAS beats the joystick best of that website by over 1000 points.
In the TAS notes section, I boldfaced the better result between this TAS and the actual current world records. While all of these actual records have been set since the game was made, I find it interesting that the programmers didn't make it possible to beat records that existed before the game was published. It was made in 1983 and released in 1984. With the exception of Javelin Throw, all the events that have current world records which beat the TAS results also had records by the end of in 1983 that would have beat the TAS as well.
  • Records at the end of 1983
    • High Jump: 2.38 meters
    • Discus: 71.85 meters
    • Pole Vault: 5.83 meters
    • 1500m: 3:30.77

Potential Questions

Could this score be beaten regardless of time? If someone were able to discover input variation that would allow for higher clearances of High Jump and Pole Vault, this score could be beaten. But I was unable to find any. This would also result in increased TAS length.
Could the time be beaten regardless of score? Absolutely. Scratching out on all non-timed events would result in a faster TAS, but a much lower score.
Could the time be beaten with equal or higher score? To my knowledge based on the the input permutations I tried, I don't believe that this score could be achieved in less time. I will be interested to see if someone is able to! (I'll actually be interested if someone is even willing to try.)

Fog: Judging.
Fog: Nothing too spectacular here.
Accepting to Vault.
feos: Pub.
Fog: After further deliberating with other judges, this cannot be accepted for the following reasons:
1) The goal choice is not quite clear.
The best possible goal choice that this run might be aiming for is maximum score. However, we do not know the highest possible score in this game with absolute certainty. If this game is aiming for fastest time, then taking scratches in all non-timed based events would be faster than actually completing the event.
2) The run is not entertaining enough for Moons tier.
Because the run's entertainment value is near-zero, this is automatically judged under Vault rules. This makes the rules much stricter in terms of goal choices.
3) The run does not match with Vault rules.
If comparing to the goal choices mentioned above, it does not neatly follow in line with what we allow in Vault. Vault requires either the fastest completion time, or the absolute maximum score possible (and proven to be such). Anything else is not allowed.
With everything above, this run must be rejected.

feos: Unrejecting to see if this movie meets the new vaultable rules for max score.

DrD2k9: Cancelling. Given the discussion that occurred after this run's unrejection and the ultimate decision that this game is indeed vault eligible under max score rules, I am working on a new version of this game with an improvement in score as well as conversion to NTSC sync settings (which is what this run should have been created with initially). I will (hopefully) also be able to include a breakdown of the game code to show that the resulting run will have the maximum possible score based on the game's coded mechanics.

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WarHippy wrote:
So there does exist a game manual In the Scoring section it says that achieving 1000+ points in any event will award you with a musical tribute. So while the ending doesn't change based on performance, the content does. There is also even an (unofficial?) Club of Champions which awards you Gold status at 10,000 points or more. Since the game does recognize some form of high score, I believe that unlocking the musical tribute in every event can count as full completion. That being said (unfortunately) I don't think this game falls under Max Score rules anymore. I think this run would have to be re-done in order to get to 1000 points as fast as possible in each event and then scratching out as soon as possible afterwards.
In Pole Vault you can only get 957 at max, so either way it feels incomplete if we define winning as getting 1000 on each event.
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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Are you ever planning to start caring about the site's goals and principles?
Featuring entertaining Tool-Assisted superplay movies? This qualifies. It's a superplay of this particular game. What you did last time was argue the following. We have 4 bins. This movie doesn't fit in bin 1, bin 2, bin 3 or bin 4, therefore it can't be published. That's crap. The fact that your ruling would have permitted a 'fastest run' that zoned out of every event as fast as possible indicates that your prior reasoning was massively flawed. If the 'rules' bar good videos, but let through trash videos, then it's clear that the problem has to do with the rules. In this particular movie you're now arguing that because "we cannot be certain that this is the truly highest score, therefore it can't be published". Which is also crap. Can anyone improve on any of the scores in this game? Yes or no? If the answer to that is no, then this movie should be published. I noticed that you didn't actually answer my question. Because the answer to it is obviously, "no, we don't know if this movie is improvable". Great! Because then it meets the standard for movies here.
EZGames69
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k so that’s going to be a no from you then, you wont try to understand the rules. Please stop talking until you have a basic understanding of how the site works.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
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You can't call "reaching the highest score" game completion because 1) it's a non-binary condition, and 2) it's arbitrary.
In this case, we have a video where there are clear maximums for each event. So while I would agree in most cases that high score would be an arbitrary criterion, it's not true for every game. There's no way I can see that the score can be manipulated to increase, and there's also no loops in the game.
When there's no hard requirement for meaningful completion, you can invent any soft requirement,
So we get back to the question. What would a superplay of this particular game look like? How would a player seek to maximize performance in the game? I think the choices of the submitter make sense to me. Lowest possible time in the track sections, and highest score in the field events. Sure makes a helluva lot more sense than 'fastest time'. Goals need to take into account game choices. Certain goals are not going to be appropriate for all games. In this case I think that what's been done here is an appropriate choice to show off what a superplay of this game would look like. And ultimately, I think that's the main purpose of this site, no? To publish superplays of available games that demonstrate precision, and play beyond what can be achieved by human players. This video achieves that. Now if the problem is that movies like this aren't vaultable, etc. then the problem is with the bins not this movie. And the original ruling was crap which is why the rules were changed.
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Please stop talking until you have a basic understanding of how the site works.
OK Boomer.
EZGames69
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Shut up, you have no understanding what you’re talking about. You have been told multiple times this and yet you still do selective reading because you always want to argue against the site. You’re not adding anything to the conversation and are just because a nuance. Just shut up.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't 12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!" Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish [Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
Joined: 1/27/2014
Posts: 181
you always want to argue against the site.
Do you have a point to make about why this movie should or should not be published?
Post subject: But seriously, Grue electricslide.
Spikestuff
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Posts: 6341
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Hey electricslide general question. Do you actually have any proper opinions on something or do you just enjoy turning every thread you enter into a large massive train-wreck or a burning building? Or in this case are you actually trying to use a current trend aka "Ok Boomer" to someone who is actually younger than the demographic it belongs to because you can't think of an actual retort and you want to, well let's keep it simple, be a person who strives for some attention no matter what you do? You still have posts that you need to get back to over at Top Gear 2 for instance where EZGames69, Memory and myself are waiting for an actually sane, non-asshole response from you. And I'm just going to remind you right now, if you choose not to look at the comments left at Top Gear 2, cause mine's particularly important as it brings up site rules in Post Content.
All posts and messages must remain civilized. Posts and messages that are or become uncivil are not allowed. The extent of civility (or lack thereof) is determined both by situation and by moderator opinion. Moderators may lock topics that become uncivil. Moderators may also edit or delete offensive posts. Disruptive posting is not allowed. This includes spamming, making multiple useless topics or posts, or repeatedly going off-topic in a topical thread. In extreme cases, disruptive members will be banned.
This is your 6th offense in the year, we haven't reached the point in December where the number would actually go down. (My post in Top Gear 2 summarizes all of the offenses.) No matter what your response is to me. You have absolutely no ground and I'm surprised you haven't been warned, or banned yet due to how insanely rude you are to other users. We literally had a user who was banned for being an intolerable bullying twat this year, and I'm sure there's going to be room for you there. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To summarize multiple posts electricslide has done as a single quote. I couldn't come up with an argument so I'm just gonna personally insult you.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account. Something better for yourself and also others.
g0goTBC
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Was this TAS entertaining? Well... it did successfully fill 12 minutes of my time without me having regrets of what I was doing, so yes, it is an entertaining movie.
Banjo-Tooie runner, DTC 8, 9, 10, and 11 winner, but more importantly, "When's GR?" Current projects: Banjo-Kazooie: Grunty's Revenge - 100% (50 minutes) Mario Party 1 - All Boards (est: 4-6 hours) Mario Party 3 - All Minigames (est: 40-50 minutes, not sure) "Ooooh, I saved some more subpixels. Look at those sweet subpixels. You can't look at them, because they're subpixels, but they look so good." - The8bitbeast "It's as if I knew what was going to happen. It's as if I had the plan written in front of me and I was reading it. I mean, I do have it in front of me, but I'm not reading it." -garagedooropener
Joined: 9/22/2012
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EZGames69 wrote:
unwright wrote:
Why is a 2.5 year old submission being necro'd & discussed at all? It's an obvious 'no' and that has been made abundantly clear. Can we close this one out? Please?
Rule changes regarding max score tases has been changed, so this tas is being relooked at. If there’s any others that could be relooked at dont be afraid to bring them up here: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19596
Ah, cool, thank you to you and feos for clearing that up.
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feos wrote:
In Pole Vault you can only get 957 at max, so either way it feels incomplete if we define winning as getting 1000 on each event.
That's...... odd. It feels like that's just a programming error, then. (Especially since the in-game record is by far the least accurate record when compared to the real-world event (even in 1984 which then it was 5.83m)). Maybe they just couldn't program the physics correctly. DrD2k9 did his due diligence in attempting to get above 1000 in pole vault, so then scratching out as soon as possible seems fine. This is something that would be perfectly acceptable if it was explained in the submission notes.
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electricslide wrote:
Are you ever planning to start caring about the site's goals and principles?
Featuring entertaining Tool-Assisted superplay movies? This qualifies. It's a superplay of this particular game.
Which of our movie rules says "being a superplay is enough to get published"?
electricslide wrote:
What you did last time was argue the following. We have 4 bins. This movie doesn't fit in bin 1, bin 2, bin 3 or bin 4, therefore it can't be published. That's crap. The fact that your ruling would have permitted a 'fastest run' that zoned out of every event as fast as possible indicates that your prior reasoning was massively flawed. If the 'rules' bar good videos, but let through trash videos, then it's clear that the problem has to do with the rules.
This movie is not "fastest run", it sacrifices time to gain higher score. Otherwise I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Provide some quotes regarding who said what and why it was wrong.
electricslide wrote:
In this particular movie you're now arguing that because "we cannot be certain that this is the truly highest score, therefore it can't be published". Which is also crap. Can anyone improve on any of the scores in this game?
I haven't said that even once. Quote?
electricslide wrote:
I noticed that you didn't actually answer my question..
There is no question in your first post of this thread.
electricslide wrote:
In this case, we have a video where there are clear maximums for each event.
Those are not "clear maximums", because when the game is not programmed to limit your score explicitly, any score can be maximum.
electricslide wrote:
There's no way I can see that the score can be manipulated to increase, and there's also no loops in the game.
The author has already found a way to increase it.
electricslide wrote:
So we get back to the question. What would a superplay of this particular game look like? How would a player seek to maximize performance in the game? I think the choices of the submitter make sense to me. Lowest possible time in the track sections, and highest score in the field events. Sure makes a helluva lot more sense than 'fastest time'. Goals need to take into account game choices. Certain goals are not going to be appropriate for all games. In this case I think that what's been done here is an appropriate choice to show off what a superplay of this game would look like. And ultimately, I think that's the main purpose of this site, no? To publish superplays of available games that demonstrate precision, and play beyond what can be achieved by human players.
What do you mean by "superplay" at all?
electricslide wrote:
And the original ruling was crap which is why the rules were changed.
What ruling?
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.
Joined: 1/27/2014
Posts: 181
Which of our movie rules says "being a superplay is enough to get published"?
The one that states, "this is the purpose for the site?"
This movie is not "fastest run", it sacrifices time to gain higher score. Otherwise I don't understand what you're trying to say here. Provide some quotes regarding who said what and why it was wrong.
Why would we use 'fastest run' to evaluate this kind of game? It makes no sense, because failing out of each event would be faster than completion. Highest score makes sense. If there's disagreement over whether the scores in this TAS are truly the highest possible score (which is a sensible concern), well, then, it makes sense to investigate the game further and to try to improve on the TAS. From what I can see, and correct me if I'm wrong, this investigation hasn't been done. Until it has been conclusively shown to be slower than that to me would be grounds for not publishing due to having known improvements.
Those are not "clear maximums", because when the game is not programmed to limit your score explicitly, any score can be maximum.
Can you prove that to be the case by improving on the scores recorded here?
The author has already found a way to increase it.
Where? He doesn't say that at all.
What do you mean by "superplay" at all?
Games done to precision beyond unassisted human capabilities.
What ruling?
The reason this game is now being reconsidered now.
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electricslide wrote:
Which of our movie rules says "being a superplay is enough to get published"?
The one that states, "this is the purpose for the site?"
Quote? There's no such phrase there.
electricslide wrote:
Why would we use 'fastest run' to evaluate this kind of game? It makes no sense, because failing out of each event would be faster than completion.
Because that's how the site works.
electricslide wrote:
Highest score makes sense.
Highest score subjectively makes sense generally, but it doesn't automatically make this movie meet other rules. What is required to make a "max score" run eligible for Vault has been linked a lot of times in this thread, go and read.
electricslide wrote:
The author has already found a way to increase it.
Where? He doesn't say that at all.
I got a PM from him.
electricslide wrote:
What do you mean by "superplay" at all?
Games done to precision beyond unassisted human capabilities.
This does not automatically make that "game" meet any of the movie rules we have.
electricslide wrote:
What ruling?
The reason this game is now being reconsidered now.
You said "the original ruling was crap which is why the rules were changed", and you don't even know what ruling you're calling crap exactly?
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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Vault Tier wrote:
Its purpose is to fulfill the site's goal of being a TAS records site, and a central repository of tool-assisted literature and information.
electricslide, I think I can understand most of your frustration with this TAS's judgment based on this quote. I still have problems myself with certain games not being publishable no matter what. There have been attempts to fix this in the past (and I will let you search the forums for all that information), but you just have to accept that for now there are strict guidelines for each tier. The following quote from the Vault Movie Rules is now the filter that has to be applied to this run:
Vault Movie Rules wrote:
This tier contains speed-based movies that don't have much entertainment value, but still represent meaningful tool-assisted speedrun records. Game choice is tightly limited. Vault rules filter out games that don't hold much weight when tool-assistance is applied in accordance with the TASing guidelines on optimization. Vault needs clear cuts, so whenever something can not be clearly distinguished, such a movie gets rejected.
Let's start with the 'meaningful' aspect. Scratching out in every event would make this fastest completion, but it turns into something that a human could easily do unassisted which in turn makes it a trivial game to TAS which means it gets rejected for not being meaningful. This point was implied but never specifically pointed out. The last line in the quote is emphasized in order to give a bit more weight and reasoning behind any lengthy discussions. There needs to be certainty that this game does or does not fit into the current guidelines. It sets a bad precedent to accept a game just because it feels right, especially when feos has quoted guidelines that specifically say it should be rejected. If it happens to fall into some truly gray area, then real (and non-hostile) discussion needs to take place on how the rules can be added to or modified to make it work. Right now we are still trying to define what entails full completion for this game (which at this point seems to fall into a gray area?).
Maximum points wrote:
Maximum points or score is allowed as a full-completion category under the following conditions: ...There is no other way to define full completion for the game...
electricslide, this is the crux of the problem. Maximum score criteria can only be applied as a last resort. We need clear reasoning that there is no meaningful way to define full completion, first. @feos - What is the improvement you were pm'd?
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Quote? There's no such phrase there.
This is a site for superplays, not speedruns. Yes, many of the videos are also speedruns, but there are many, many videos that are not speedruns that are designed to show off technical precision over the entire game. That's why we have 100 percent categories...
Because that's how the site works.
Not necessarily. There are many cases where a 'fastest run' would be inappropriate/misleading/technically worthless. This game is one such case. 'Fastest run' would fail out of every event. Ain't nobody got time for dat.
Highest score subjectively makes sense generally
I wouldn't even go so far. Most of the videos here on this site are done for fastest time, but there are exceptions. I'm not arguing that high score movies are even necessarily common, just that for a small minority of games are where they would make sense. This is one such game.
it doesn't automatically make this movie meet other rules. What is required to make a "max score" run eligible for Vault has been linked a lot of times in this thread, go and read.
Sure. But I haven't seen evidence that the scores can be improved on. If it can, great, then the movie can be edited and the new strategy incorporated.
I got a PM from him.
Okay. So how am I expected to know about things that aren't public?
This does not automatically make that "game" meet any of the movie rules we have.
I'm arguing that this movie should be published because of the precision exhibited. Rules have changed before, rules can change again if need be.
You said "the original ruling was crap which is why the rules were changed", and you don't even know what ruling you're calling crap exactly?
I paraphrased the ruling. Basically, movies have bins. This didn't qualify for one bin due to not being considered entertaining enough and didn't meet the vault bin because it wasn't submitted ib pure speed. Thus the movie fell into a gray area because of issues with the individual bins, not with the quality of the movie. That's why it's being considered now, because as you said the vault rules changed. Now, if there's additional non-public information crucial to the assessment of the case, it would be lovely to see the evidence for it. Then we can start arguing about substantive points... If it's a loop, all that has to be done is to ban the loop.
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electricslide, I think I can understand most of your frustration with this TAS's judgment based on this quote. I still have problems myself with certain games not being publishable no matter what. There have been attempts to fix this in the past (and I will let you search the forums for all that information), but you just have to accept that for now there are strict guidelines for each tier. The following quote from the Vault Movie Rules is now the filter that has to be applied to this run:
I lean on the side of publishing superplays of less than popular movies. I think the creation of the vault was one of the best ideas this site has had. Which is why I'm defending this movie here.
Let's start with the 'meaningful' aspect. Scratching out in every event would make this fastest completion, but it turns into something that a human could easily do unassisted which in turn makes it a trivial game to TAS which means it gets rejected for not being meaningful. This point was implied but never specifically pointed out.
That's what I've been saying, and why I think that the submitters choice of highs score is much more appropriate. The problem is the interaction between the bins. I think that's something that can be fixed without hurting the quality of the movies on the site.
Right now we are still trying to define what entails full completion for this game (which at this point seems to fall into a gray area?).
Yes, it's not a well programmed game in that regard. It would be easy if it were, but unfortunately, that's not the case, and you have to look at the movie as it is, not as you might wish it to be.
electricslide, this is the crux of the problem. Maximum score criteria can only be applied as a last resort. We need clear reasoning that there is no meaningful way to define full completion, first.
Given the post of a 'score threshold' not working properly due to programming errors, makes it more frustrating. But, as was posted the real issue is information that wasn't made publicly available regarding loops. I hope you guys can work out a solution for this movie to allow it to be published. I think that the submitter did a good job on a crap game, and I'd rather see this movie get over the hurdle than languish in gruefood. I'd think differently if I thought the submitter was attempting to do an end around the rules, but it seems to me a genuine good faith attempt to do an appropriate movie for this game. I realize you guys are trying to find a consistent ruling that would apply across many other games, rather than an exceptional one for this game, and that's a big problem. Sometimes that is not possible.
Memory
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feos wrote:
Runs aiming for time are still required to complete the game.
The movie must be complete wrote:
Where applicable, the movie must reach an ending screen that positively signifies a game is finished successfully. Reaching a game-over screen is not considered beating the game. If a game shows the same ending screen regardless of success or failure, reaching it is not considered successful completion.
The problem is quite simple and precise: the actual completion requirements are missing from the game. You can't call "reaching the highest score" game completion because 1) it's a non-binary condition, and 2) it's arbitrary. I may suggest that you're supposed to not fail in any of the attempts. Or to beat some record in each of them. Or something else. When there's no hard requirement for meaningful completion, you can invent any soft requirement, but it would remain artificial, not inherent. Meaningful completion criteria are undefined for this game. And we can't use max score to outright replace the fastest completion goal, because... that won't help with the completion definition.
You are playing through all of the events with a goal of aiming for the high score. By playing all the events you are going through all unique content the game has to offer and high score adds an objective to aim for. If completion is considered a problem because of that rule, the rules need to be fixed because it's not like you can just add additional events. This seems like a rule written with speedruns in mind and is one of the flaws with the site in my opinion.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
DrD2k9
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To everyone who cares, and for what it's worth: This submission is definitively sub-optimal. I have indeed found input improvements that beat this submission's score. So submitting just those would show this run not to be max score. Further, this submission uses PAL sync settings making the timing slower than it should be; the 1500m should take 3:33 according to the in-game timer, but it actually takes about 4:15 based on the encode. /the game should have been run in NTSC sync settings to begin with (I'm not even sure if I even knew much about sync settings at the time of this runs creation. If I did, this setting slipped my attention somehow). Finally, I am currently re-working this game in the proper NTSC mode while also attempting to break down the events at a code level to determine a true maximum score per event based on the game mechanics. Once/If I can accomplish this, a new submission or userfile will be uploaded. That update should be definitively max score and therefore vault eligible.
Experienced player (995)
Joined: 1/9/2011
Posts: 227
So, a couple things... maybe I missed it, but has there been a clear consensus that max score is the only valid completion criteria? Secondly, it keeps getting brought up that there needs to be proof that the score is truly maximum. Where are the guidelines for this? I know it got mentioned in the previous judgment of this submission, but I believe that was by mistake. Max score had only ever been an allowable goal for moons tier, but it was set to be published in Vault so that shouldn’t have been mentioned at all in the notes. It’s great if you want to definitively prove that it’s the maximum. I just don’t know why that would be required.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11274
Location: RU
WarHippy wrote:
Secondly, it keeps getting brought up that there needs to be proof that the score is truly maximum. Where are the guidelines for this? I know it got mentioned in the previous judgment of this submission, but I believe that was by mistake. Max score had only ever been an allowable goal for moons tier, but it was set to be published in Vault so that shouldn’t have been mentioned at all in the notes. It’s great if you want to definitively prove that it’s the maximum. I just don’t know why that would be required.
Requirement that there must be a hard-coded score cap to count as full completion, has been removed. If score is the only viable way of defining full completion for a game, we don't require you to get absolute maximum (like 100 out of 100 available), even though that's preferable obviously. We require you to gain as much as TAS tools allow you. Which may vary, just like final completion time depends on one's skills.
WarHippy wrote:
So, a couple things... maybe I missed it, but has there been a clear consensus that max score is the only valid completion criteria?
Not yet.
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.
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11274
Location: RU
Memory wrote:
You are playing through all of the events with a goal of aiming for the high score. By playing all the events you are going through all unique content the game has to offer and high score adds an objective to aim for. If completion is considered a problem because of that rule, the rules need to be fixed because it's not like you can just add additional events. This seems like a rule written with speedruns in mind and is one of the flaws with the site in my opinion.
I think instead we should focus on this, as an explicit rule for sports games:
In sports that depend on a variety of environments or situations, such as golf, completion can be defined by clearing every environment or situation in the game.
Does this movie clear every event? If it does not, maybe it should?
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.
Player (26)
Joined: 8/29/2011
Posts: 1206
Location: Amsterdam
feos wrote:
Does this movie clear every event? If it does not, maybe it should?
There's a whole series of sports titles with various sub-games for different events; such as this one, the Summer/Winter Games series, Skate Or Die, and so forth. It strikes me that these can be "completed" in four different ways, some of which are noteworthy and some are not. I'll use a downhill skiing event as an example, but it really applies to others as well. (1) Stop the game as quickly as possible. In terms of skiing, that means crashing into the nearest tree. (2) Reach the end as quickly as possible. For skiing, go downhill as fast as possible, to reach the finish line. (3) Get the highest score. For skiing, you might score 100 points for each slalom flag you cross. (4) Get a better score than your competitors. Often, these games have computer-controlled opponents, and you get a gold medal (or equivalent) by doing better than them. #1 clearly doesn't look like a superplay. #4 bothers me because quite often, computer controller opponents play really badly; so doing better than that doesn't particularly prove anything. #2 is potentially boring but could be vault-worthy as an "any%" run. #3 has the problem that it may not be possible to prove that your score is indeed the best. But has this ever stopped us before? Certain metroidvanias have a percentage counter so a "100% run" would be acceptable... until somebody figures out a way to score 101% or 105% or 114% and then that becomes the goal. This would also apply to sport games; do your due diligence to make plausible that your score is indeed the maximum, and it's possible that your run gets obsoleted by a higher score. This has the advantage that if any sub-game has a fixed length (e.g. "figure skate for three minutes") then aiming for a high score would look more interesting and more like a superplay than just idling for 180 seconds. $.02
Site Admin, Skilled player (1236)
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#2 and #3 is how we'd branch this game if we agreed on what clearing a level means. Not losing by the original sport rules feels like the sanest way of defining it, but that's just my preliminary opinion. If we agree that this game has a meaningful completion criterion, then we won't have to invent new rules or clauses. Adding max score as a valid any% goal mixes it together with full completions. It feels like we're trying to patch away the internal problem of the game that's too simplistic to have traditional any% definition. Not having strictly capped max score makes it worse.
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.
DrD2k9
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Expert player (2080)
Joined: 8/21/2016
Posts: 1016
Location: US
feos wrote:
...Not having strictly capped max score makes it worse.
It may not have a strictly capped max score in the sense of 'the score is not allowed to go higher than xxxx.' But the coded movement mechanics (even as simplistic as they are) will ultimately limit the maximum achievable score to a particular value. Therefore, a run that utilizes the game's coded mechancis to achieve this score will have achieved the 'max' score. The only exception to this would be if someone discovered a glitch allowing for surpassing/bypassing the intended mechanics to yield a higher score. This would be analogous to the metroidvania examples mentioned earlier than can achieve greater than 100% due to new discoveries/glitches.