For most of these I'm pretty sure I use both depending on the context and which has the more appropriate prosodic quality for the sentence it appears in.
I find that spelling things out can be easier on people not likely to be familiar with the various abbreviations. Sometimes I even say things like "Super N-E-S" too.
lso, that 1-minute track sounds great, but it's just as useful as an static image of a scanned photo. The real fact is that the SNES could never have something as good as this in a real game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLvG-Al6tOg :P
Woah, woah, woah... Are you comparing Antonio Vivaldi to upbeat video-game techno?... The very thought of such sacrilege...
I don't know enough about the specs to make an honest comparison, but every time my friends introduce me to good Genesis games (I was always a SNES player as kid) something about the graphics and sound always makes me cower in my chair like a vampire's just walked into the room.
Like recently he turned on Warsong and I got this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2m6pbTP5M7A
Awesome awesome game, but the sound effects really just... No, that's not fair, I loved the sound effects. It's just that I loved them because they sounded like something out of one of those button-operated digital noise maker pads kids had in the late 80's, early 90's. To much clunky explosions and violent noise to be "camp" but just as entertaining.
Phantasy Star VI was something else... I mean, the sound was good, but it's just so much sharper, and rumbly, and digital sounding than what I'd expect from the SNES. In comparison, everything on the SNES sounds so light, and smooth and balanced... And I know I'm using very sophisticated music theory terms here (sarcasm) so I'll just give what I think are two representative samples:
Phantasy Star IV:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HR_dtc3xL_c
Secret of Mana:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEu98t_8HbY
I'll reiterate what other people have said in that there's simply no comparing the sound capabilities of either system. Maybe it all depends on whether a person prefers Antonio Vivaldi or techno.
PS. I loved what little music I heard from the Sega Master System:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn4Ie8WL7sE
The Japanese sound was supposedly better, but I kind of hate it comparison.
Woah, I don't remember the tune up doing that! This is incredible! And it would mean so much less grinding too! What the hell just happened anyway? All I remember getting is +1 to something! One more reason why Lux is the character of choice I guess.
Still, I agree that this run ought to be finished using it's current route. Not only because so much work has been put into it already, but also because in a game like this there's a lot of reward in seeing the original game engine eviscerated through intentional gameplay. This is a game that evokes a lot of frustration in those who have played it; seeing the game as they remember it destroyed has a certain cathartic element to it that seeing an unfamiliar bug exploited doesn't. Even if the current route is obsoleted, I'm sure that if the comments explain that there's an obsolete non-glitched run you'll still have plenty of fans opting to watch that instead. I know that for a few movies on this site I prefer the obsoleted runs anyway.
have found that other gamers I know don't really like the idea of a Tool Assisted run.
Ya, I get this too... Whereas I like to follow the TAS community fairly closely, most of my other friends are mesmerized by Let's Plays and the occasional speedrun. It's a different story with them though because they all know how TASs are made; that it's just emulator input and that it could all theoretically be done on the actual hardware. The thing is, it's because they're familiar with emulation that they associate tools like save states with cheating; after-all, that's what most casual players use them for.
Well, there's that, and the fact that it kind of kills the nostalgia buzz when characters start flickering about at 60 Hz and glitching through walls and stuff. When most people watch gaming movies, they're looking for a sense of familiarity, something they can relate to their own experiences. When you start doing things a real player could never realistically accomplish it just doesn't jive with a lot of people's sensibilities about what gameplay should look like, especially when you start doing things like taking damage to save time besides.
Myself, I've always dreamed of being a game developers and its because I'm fascinated with what games are like on the inside that I like seeing TASers take them apart. That, and I admire cunning. The first time I saw a player taking damage to save time (in the Castlevania run) I was taken aback, but then when I saw them damage-boost I was struck by the genius of it all... Anyway, I agree that it would be helpful to publicize things like commentaries, strategies, tricks, game mechanics, etc.; anything to help more casual players relate TASs back to their own experiences playing these games.
Faster text is not a good reason to switch versions.
No? Not even when the difference is as drastic as that? Eh, it's not as though I feel strongly either way, but I do tend to regard long cut-scenes as the weakest part of any% runs in general. I personally don't see much of a speed-entertainment trade off to (usually) unreadable English; readable text in a 100% run showing off a enough of the game to peak my nostalgia, maybe, but that will never happen on this site.
I'll chalk it up to sniveling children who automatically take foreign languages as their cue to ignore whatever it is they're looking at.
Eh? I didn't see that about the text before. Pretty crazy stuff. Only, the Japanese goes too fast to read... You know, you have to spend all those years in classrooms, pouring through dictionaries and practicing translation; it takes a fair amount of time to read Japanese! Especially when it's blitzes by at lightning speed.
In all seriousness though, I wouldn't mind seeing the any% run in Japanese... The longer runs that show off all the stuff the casual viewer might feel nostalgic about though really should be in English.
So, I'm still going through my notes and compiling information for a possible resource page (and probably an in-depth FAQ). It's a lot to organize but progress has been steady.
Anyway, I thought that in the meantime I might as well give my input on a few bugs I myself have experienced. In the first several pages the following was reported:
Mazzeneko:
It happened when I was levelupping magic in Ice Country. I was just hammering nonstop Sabres to the sprite (I controlled the boy and accessed the magic window to the girl and just kept on casting sabres.
Then I ran out of magic and used a walnut at the same time when sabre was casted AND sprite did a attack magic to an enemy. The games light/darkness went haywire, it stayed the same darkness what happens when you cast Freeze. Oh well.. I saved and quitted. When I continued the same game next day I noticed hero did only half the damage with his weapon than he did yesterday O.o He was at level 80 something and did over 400 damage with normal attacks. After that clitch he only did about 250. I don't remember what my stats were before clitch... When I started a new game I did 250 with my hero around level 50 or so. Grrr. Nasty stuff.
I myself have experience something similar while playing the Virtual Console port of this game on the Wii. While grinding in the Upper Land I cast lighting and for some reason the palette flashing effect kind of got stuck; all the walkable tiles ended up staying the bright color they change to during the spell's animation. It didn't go away until I entered the cave on route to Matango. I didn't realize if this affected my stats at all, but if this bug is reproducible and it does effect stats it might be useful to experiment with.
Also, last time I played this game I got stuck in walls on at least three separate occasions. I'm not sure how this happened (probably got knocked there by an enemy), but in each case I had to use the whip and Flammie Drum to cancel out again. If this bugs were better documented it might provide for some useful time savers, especially near doors where it wouldn't matter if you get your other character's stuck behind walls.
Finally, last time I played this game I had it just BREAK during the Mana Beast Fight. The animation in which it flew from the right side of the screen to the left just kept on repeating, and repeating, and repeating without ever engaging any attacks of its own or being vulnerable to my own attacks and magic. I ended up having to reset so this got me wel pissed off. If anyone know what might have happened, I'd be glad to hear about it.
Right now I'm playing the Japanese version just for language practice... Maybe I can see about repeating some of this stuff.
I though that you were suggesting tags to replace the "heavy glitch abuse" tag.
Well, it is true that I think the "heavy glitch abuse" tag ought to be replaced with more specific categories actually descriptive of what effect these glitches entail. As I see it, glitch abuse is such a broad concept, and so overarching in its significance that it can generally be taken for granted in a TAS. Terms like "heavy" and "light" only make things worse by shoveling subjective judgement calls onto already vague terms.
The only alternative category I actually went ahead and named was for "sequence breaks" because that's generally what "heavy glitch abuse" means to me.
If you were suggesting more detailed tags to replace the "uses warps" tag, then it might be a different issue, although I still think that four tags is a bit too much.
Perhaps I have obscured the issue. The only thing I actually proposed was that the warps tag ought to be split in two. A "Warps" tag for a game's own warps, and a "Sequence Breaks" tag for the exploitation of bugs that allow runners to skip large portions otherwise intended to be mandatory.
The other categories were mostly just me pointing out that current categories like "uses game restart sequence" and "corrupts save data" can also be looked at as kinds of warps, but really we should leave them alone because they can have (much) broader implications than just that. I point them out mostly to suggest that things like corrupting save data should not be conflated with things like using a game's own glitches to break sequence.
In fact, I've always considered that one of the main purposes of the movie categories is to describe the huge visual anomalies that take place in a TAS, rather than just being a "FYI tag".
Eh, I wouldn't say they're FYI... The way I see it, tags are a recognition of the fact that a game can be completed any number of ways and that a run's internal rules and priorities will determine the route it takes. Warps, number of players, save data corruption, completion percentage, avoiding damage, pacifism, killing everything...: These are all extremely important aspects of determining a game's route. If you have preferences about how you'd like to see a game played, these will tell you if a run meets your criteria.
But things like "luck manipulation..." Since when is avoiding luck manipulation a valid route choice? I don't even think that's possible in a TAS. Luck manipulation isn't a goal, it's a technique for achieving other goals like "precise character movement" and "hit detection abuse." If we wanted to start keeping track of these things, I guess we could, but I really think that's what the descriptions are for.
It's not the only case where it applies. If a run abuses glitches to, for example, get 99 items of a certain type, that's quite heavy glitch abuse.
Fair enough, I think that's a good example.
On the other hand though, it occurs to me that the actual result of such glitches is drastically different than, say, something that would allow the runner to skip the vast majority of a game by exploiting a sequence breaks. For search purposes, a category as broad as this doesn't seem very useful.
I'm not sure so many similar tags are necessary or useful.
Then have you changed your opinion from last year? By this I mean the following statement:
I think it might be a good idea to distinguish between the game's own warps (eg. in SMB1) and "warping" due to glitching.
"Uses warps" has a whole different meaning in those cases.
Looking over my own list I think that adding this distinction is the only real difference between what I'm proposing and the working list posted by adelikat. I'm in agreement with your previous statement that a game's own warps are categorically different from sequence breaking glitches. As for the rest, what would you have merged or dropped?
By the way, I think a label like "uses sequence breaks" or some variant thereof would be useful to describe what I'm talking about.
As for the issue of luck manipulation, I don't think you've made the position at all clear:
How do you define which submissions are publish-worthy and which aren't? How do you define which games are good choices for TASing and which aren't? How do you define when a submission is entertaining enough to be published? What were the principles used to differentiate between the glitched and non-glitched versions of Super Metroid or Pokemon?
Can you define those things without being entirely subjective?
That's what we have publishers, judges, or whoever is in charge of applying tags to publications, for. They decide, using their experience and expertise of the subject, which runs use sufficiently heavy luck manipulation to deserve the tag. There may be guidelines and rules of thumb for this, but ultimately it's the decision of a judge ("judge" in the sense of someone who judges whether a submission applies for a certain tag or not).
(And no, "it could cause controversy" is a moot argument. Rejection of submissions causes controversy all the time (and sometimes even accepting submissions for publication does.) That doesn't stop the system from working just fine.)
I don't think it's right to say that we need such categories and then to turn around abdicate responsibility for determining what they actually mean. The purpose of a judge is to interpret rules and guidelines; without such rules and guidelines being instituted a judge cannot be expected to fulfill their duty effectively. Likewise, it doesn't help the runners any if there's no transparency in the decision making process. Of course it ultimately comes down to human judgement, but codification is an important part of that process.
Thus, I'd be very interested to know what concrete line you'd draw between "light" and "heavy" luck manipulation.
Personally, I don't see different kinds of luck manipulation is being descriptive of distinctions between different runs. If anything, they distinguish between genres and formats of gameplay. In action games luck manipulation tends to focus more on manipulating enemy behavior and drops. In RPGs you can manipulate damage, stats, drops, encounters, etc. Yet, most people would probably say that the former constitutes "light" luck manipulation while the latter constitutes "heavy" luck manipulation because it's so much more obvious:
Warp wrote:
...Thus for example a TAS of Super Mario Bros does not get the tag because there's no heavy luck manipulation possible in the game, but a TAS of Simon's Quest does get the tag because there's heavy luck manipulation.
In fact, luck manipulation in Super Mario Bros is much more difficult to do than that in Simon's Quest.
Given the apparently deterministic attack patterns of the enemies in in SMB I never would have suspected this myself. Furthermore, if the depth of luck manipulation can be this obscure what does it help as a search criteria?
Really, I think the major differences in what people consider "light" and "heavy" luck manipulation are an artifact of a game's genre, and since this aspect of a game is already kept track of elsewhere there is no need for a separate category.
Oh one other thing; I'm wondering about how useful "manipulates luck" is as a category. As has been pointed out before, most games have it in some sense or another and I don't see why you would ever NOT manipulate luck if it would help. In most cases I'd say that luck manipulation is a TAS technique and not a "genre" classification like "100% completion" or "no-warp." This is also why I'd be against "Zipping" and so on having a label in and of itself. I think labels should indicate parameters distinguishing the run's internal rules and objectives rather than its techniques. Actual technique's belong in the run's description or author comments.
Honestly, if I wanted to look up "heavy luck manipulation," I'd look in the "RPG" and "Strategy" genres instead because I know that's where I'd find all the good stuff...
Also: About the "best ending" label... The best ending for Chrono Trigger is the one where they're all dinosaurs right?
I've always thought of heavy glitch abuse as meaning "abuses programming errors to skip significant portions of the game." So, for instance, the current run of Earthbound, the Chrono Trigger Run run, the glitched Zelda II and Zelda alttp runs, etc. In that sense, "heavy glitch abuse" is really just another term for "warp." I think that a label reflecting this would make far more sense than an ambiguous term like "heavy glitch abuse."
Thus, I think there simply needs to be more to distinguish between different kinds of warps:
1) Teleportation: Things like teleport spells and junction points full of portals. These need no special mention because they're taken for granted.
2) Warps: Things like the warp pipes and and whistles in Super Mario Bros. ie. Hidden though intentional features that allow the player to skip significant portions of the game. This (or its negative) definitely needs a category.
3) Restart Sequences: Self explanatory. Perhaps these (or the negative) should have a category, although I don't see why you wouldn't use it if it would save time.
4) Save Corruption: Self explanatory. Should definitely have a category.
5) Glitch Skipping: What now comes under the heading "heavy glitch abuse." Use of program errors to skip entire gameplay scenarios: Eg. the Earthbound run, the glitched Zelda alttp, Zelda II, the Final Fantasy II, run for the sealed cave etc.
I'd say that the use of zipping and scrolling errors like you'd see in Megaman don't need a separate category because I don't see why anyone would ever not yes them unless it means skipping actual scenarios (Like in Zelda II) in which case that aspect of the bug abuse is what needs a category.
"Travels out of Bounds" does make sense to me though.
Christ, I almost forgot to vote...
Last Friday me and two friends ended up sitting down and watching this video. One was the guy who introduced me to this game last year; I told him there was TAS of someone beating Phantasy Star IV in an hour and a half and he demanded I bring it up on the laptop. The other guy had never seen the game before. Surprisingly, the three of us enjoyed it enough that we actually sat there and watched the entire thing. Since we all had variable knowledge of TAS's and the game in general, it helped that we had a lot to explain and comment on; well, that and rants about the awful technique names...
So yes vote for a great way to spend a Friday night, even if it does make me feel socially inept somehow.
To top it off, the most powerful final-final-final version of Dark Force has a feminine body after every previous incarnation was male.
I don't know, it's kind of hard to gender giant pulsating masses of deformed flesh and claws with heads that look like fanged helmets with evil glowing eyes. Besides, the first of the Profound Darkness's forms could easily be seen as a reference to the vagina dentata...
Ya? I've read this topic through from first to last post but so far I've only made notes for up to page 13 or so. I've never worked on a TAS of my own (and probably never will) so I wouldn't be able to vouch for the cogency of the final product.
Still, if anyone would actually care to see a resource page for this game I'd be happy to keep on working on this stuff and see about supplying a final report to an editor.
If that's the sort of decisions you'd make, I don't think you'd be a billionaire for long.
Pish posh! I'd keep my finances perfectly parsimonious by neglecting such frivolous expenses as charitable donations, gifts to needy loved ones, and tipping... Seriously, I don't know what else I'd actually spend my money on besides video games, and even then the effort of overseeing such acquisitions would probably preclude spending even one thousandth of a billion dollars. I guess art supplies too, but those would be work related expenses... I could get a house with a pool, maybe eat out a lot... So ya, I honestly don't think I'm in any danger of running out of my imaginary money.
But it just goes to say that TAS's are one of the few things in life from which I derive any kind of joy, so congratulations on being awesome, especially with the Family Feud run.
If ever I should become an eccentric billionaire overnight I'd easily put a good 20k on seeing the Secret of Mana run finally being completed. *Sigh* Wouldn't having money be grand?
people could put up bounties on games, however instead of paying people individually, all of the money could go directly to the site. This may seem absurd at first read, but I feel like this could actually be successful and it could address nearly every issue that has been raised:
This is exactly what I was going to suggest. It sounds a bit like Communism (Poor Alexey Pajitnov!) but given the way the TAS community actually works there's some sense to it. So far none of the amounts talked about have acceded what one could make from a shift at a minimum wage job; for an individual that's next to nothing, but for the site, it might do some good. Furthermore, I think there are specific benefits to this approach.
1) It might help more to publicize high demand runs by giving some objective criteria for how in-demand they are based on how many people are willing to contribute and by how much.
2) The fact that people are willing to pay money, no matter how little, might encourage a TASer by giving some sense for how much their run would be appreciated.
3) Having the money donated to the site makes it less "about" the money (ie., less like work) than it does about honor (ie. contributing to the community). Obviously submitting high-quality runs is what's really going to make people admire you, but the fact of its generating income for the site certainly reflects favorably on them.
4) It would give fans a more tangible sense of their own contribution, letting them think they're "greasing the wheels," regardless of whether or not its true.
5) It might help build anticipation for projects already in the works.
6) I don't see anyone fighting over donation money.
7) It might generate more interest in donations; anyone who's ever had to take psychology or marketing knows that how you frame a transaction goes a long way towards generating interest in it. I'm sure that a lot of people visit the site only ever seeing 1-10% of the total content; most of them probably wouldn't be that interested in donating because they'd end up asking themselves why they'd give money to something they only use a very small fraction of. Now, paying to directly "sponsor" a run of their favorite game, that's probably something a lot more people can get behind. I know there are a lot of runs I'd be happy to contribute to.
The main flaw I see in such a scheme is that would help to advertise which games have a following. It might seem discouraging for a person to do a run with no money on it when there are runs worth some 100$. Then again, its always been true that some runs are more popular than others, this would only help to make that sense of interest more transparent.[/quote]
Wow, it really does sound a lot better now doesn't it? I've never played nor heard of this game before but I think I'm familiar enough with these kinds of games that I have an idea for just how involved something like this really is. It was a bit bland but the fact that you sprinted through the entire game so quickly (Is the character supposed to move that fast? I think I'd be surprised regardless of the answer.) is certainly worthy of praise. Yes.
You know, it's 26-page, 6-year-old topics like this that really make me wish there were synopsis pages pared down to information on route plans, useful addresses, LUA scripts, glitches, exploits, WIPs, run progress, etc.
I don't mind having to read something of this length, but I do find that it makes things unnecessarily difficult to follow. Hopefully I can get this read end-to-end later this week and see if I have anything new to contribute. At the very least I'll try and make some detailed, well-organized notes on all the pertinent information.
Well, that's kind of my point: If that is also allowed, then what other forms of tampering with the hardware should be allowed as well? Where do we draw the line? How would you define what is acceptable and what isn't (and why)?
I think I made clear the test by which I personally would draw that distinction in my previous post. Any operation that makes use of an intentionally designed feature of the console that a developer can reasonably be expected to anticipate should be considered legitimate. This would include gamepad input, the power and reset buttons and plugging or unplugging official hardware from ports for controllers and memory cards; a developer should be able to anticipate that any of these routine operations might occur during any point during gameplay. That such operations can be exploited in ways unintended by the developer, whether left+right or save-corruption, is perfectly legitimate. To rip the power supply out of the console while it is in play, or to do the same with a cartridge, or to tilt or jimmy it while it sits in the console, is illegitimate because it performs an operation that the system was not, at any point in time, designed to accommodate as an intentional feature offered to the player. This is my opinion.
For example invincibility could make some runs faster because taking-damage-as-shortcut wouldn't be limited to your life bar. In some games it may even mean that you can run straight through enemies without having to dodge or spend time killing them.
But would it be entertaining though? There are a lot of games without pacifist or no-hit runs specifically because such things are not necessarily fun to watch. I'm sure that this would fall under that category. Some tend to think of TASing as a sport in which all that matters is getting the lowest time possible frame for frame. I prefer to think of it as an art form by which emulation tools are used to produce creative and interesting gameplay. Speed optimization is important in the same way that perspective and proportion are important to an illustrator, but I don't see them as the be all and end all. The be all and end all is whether people enjoy watching the movie.
You could achieve the same thing by tampering with the game's ROM using an (emulated) gamegenie device or whatever. Why wouldn't that be "priceless"? Why is that suddenly "cheating" and/or "boring"? What's the difference?
That's kind of my point.
...
Hacked ROMs are generally not accepted because they make little sense. You could eg. just hack the Super Mario Bros ROM so that you can complete the game in 30 seconds. However, that just becomes more or less a machinima video, not a tool-assisted speedrun.
Using gamegenie codes is not much better, which is why it's generally not allowed (something I personally agree with).
Like I said above, in my opinion what really matters is that a run be interesting and creative, not that it completes the game as quickly as possible. That you could have a game display its ending sequence at startup might not be trivial, but it has no value as a TAS because if all you wanted was the ending you could just look it up on Youtube. What makes a TAS interesting is seeing how a clever manipulation of the operations available to the player can produce unexpected results. To me, seeing a player hack a game from within itself using a few frame perfect resets is entertaining. Knowing that game has been reprogrammed to display its ending sequence on start-up might earn a smirk, but that's about it, it's not much to watch.
What would make a Game Genie run interesting, in my opinion, is if it would show off some unique aspect of the game not apparent in normal gameplay; for instance, to show off debug rooms or prototype levels that didn't make it into the final game, or maybe just to show off the kind of strange game behavior that occurs when you start skipping ahead without the appropriate flags. There's also the possibility of showing off some particularly crazy iterations of actual gameplay, although that once again depends on the creativity of the TASer. The thing is that if Game Genie runs were allowed, we'd probably by spammed by kids submitting Super Mario Bros. 3 runs with permanent hammer bros. suits and infinite jumping and it would become a dreadful annoyance. I agree that Game Genie runs should not technically be allowed, but I do hope for the day that somebody gives us a good demo to prove why they should be.
If corrupting the game by resetting is allowed, why shouldn't corrupting the game by shutting down the console be allowed? What's the difference
I think both should be allowed, I just thought I'd point at that they do behave differently.
Btw, I'm honestly interested in knowing your (plural) opinion about the question I posted above: Why is using cheat codes supported by the game itself forbidden, but corrupting the game's save data via a reset allowed, even though they both could ostensibly give similar results? If you think about it, there's little practical difference between the two, IMO.
Personally, I can't imagine a lot of TASers needing to use cheat codes. What would they want 99 lives for? True, there are level select codes, but using something like that would be, by most standards, trivial and boring. Now, if such a code allowed the player to do something unique, interesting, or skillful (say, allowed them to play as a hidden character) I'd be happy to see it. Come to think of it, Inichi's Chrono Trigger run did use an in-game code to be able to load the corrupted save date in the first place...
Just as a practical example: If a game had a cheat code which gives you 99 items, it would probably be forbidden to use it. But if you could get the same 99 items via save data corruption, it would be allowed. But why?
If a save-corruption run gave itself 99 of every item, that probably would be boring. Getting 99 items of glitchy nonsense that allows you to access various memory address though, is priceless.
If corrupting the game by resetting is allowed, why shouldn't corrupting the game by shutting down the console be allowed?
This is a good question, although, I'm not sure that I agree with the use of a loaded term like "hardware abuse." In my opinion, an operation should be considered legal only so far as it can be considered use of an intentional feature of the console that a developer could reasonable anticipate a player using during normal game-play. By these standards, plugging or unplugging a gamepad or memory card from the console would be consider admissible whereas tilting the cartridge would not. Corrupting VROM data does sound like a gray area by this test, but as I see it, if both saving data and turning off power to the machine are to be considered legal operations then there should not be any restrictions on when they are used, no more than there are for left+right; that the data is corrupted is simply an unintended consequence of normal, legal actions being used to produce a creative result.
As for Game Genies, etc... To be honest, if somebody did use Game Genie codes to pull off a clever, interesting or artful TAS, I'd be happy to see it. I'm sure I've watched things like that on Youtube. All a Game Genie code really amounts to is a patch, and we do have hacks in the demo section, and I'm sure that if someone made something that everyone fell in love with it would appear in the demo section. The reason that convention prohibits such things is that we don't want a pile of incompetent amateurs submitting a slew of needlessly sharked TASs; and because the community typically expects to see TASs of unmodified games manipulated in a manner consistent with normal operation of the original console. Maybe things will change if a talented TASer approaches the task and we move beyond the era of common yokels on Youtube refering to TASs as "cheats," but even then, it will still be a categorically different way to do a TAS.
Please forgive my awkward manner of discussing this but I am having trouble understanding what manner of policy you intend to promote. It rather sounds like you have been arguing that all uses of the reset button are illegitimate and I am curious to know from what premise you are coming from. If that's not what you're saying, then I apologize.
Now, you've conceded that developers intend for players to, at some point, reset or shut off their consoles. And yet, for whatever reason you seem to be arguing that this fairly routine operation is the equivalent of smashing the console with a hammer. I really hope you can see why this is a stumbling block for me. Please, do try to fine-tune your arguments so that I can better understand them; its rather difficult trying to hold a productive discussion without a well defined premise.
As I see it, gaming is something that happen when a ROM image interacts with a console's hardware and the player input processed by that hardware. Developers expect players to manipulate a control pad and they expect them to, at some point, reset or turn off their machines. The software for games with save date are programmed with the expectation that the player will save, turn off their machines, turn them back on sometime later and load the save data so that the game may continue. I cannot under any circumstance see why this routine action would qualify as "hardware abuse" equivalent to piercing the console with a screwdriver.
Furthermore, there is a significant difference between pressing the reset button (a soft reset) and shutting the power off and on (a hard reset); game data such as high scores may be carried over in the first case where they would be erased in the second. Ripping out the power supply probably would result in something like a hard reset unless it damaged the console or cart (Which would obviously be a disqualifying "modification"). Both reset and power buttons are an intended feature of the console designed to be used in conjunction with normal gameplay and which all developers must anticipate while programming their games. Throwing the console against a wall during gameplay is not an intended design feature; if anything, consoles are designed to resist damage, ie. modification. I'm no electrician, but if I might hazard a guess I'd suggest that for treating the console to any form of violence to have an effect on how the software is processed it would have to produce a temporary or permanent modification to the system or cart. The power and reset buttons do not modify the console because they are an intended feature installed with the universal expectation that a player will use them at some point while running the software.
Again, I fail to understand. You're telling me that the developers never expected for players, playing their games, to ever push the reset button, or shut off their machines? The very idea of having saves argues otherwise.
What about the use of the Atlas Amulet in Secret of Evermore? That's a trick any player can perform on the original cart using legitimate resets and which many discovered independently. It would be ridiculous to say that a TASer should not exploit a bug like that by doing something as trivially simple as loading a save file while a certain status effect is in force. Why should a TASer not be allowed to exploit a bug even I can?
I can maybe see why turning off the power while saving would be considered a special case. After-all, many games specifically tell you "don't turn off the power while saving" and it's something no sensible player would ever want to attempt lest they ruin all their saves or break their prized copy of a rare RPG.
My own opinion is that the purpose of a TAS is to exploit the intentional input features of a console so as to play games in ways never intended by either software or hardware. Turning off your console is not a hardware modification, it's something you do so that your system doesn't devour all your electricity, overheat, and die. Nor do I think one can say that there are certain frames at which one cannot turn off their console. It's a TAS; you can press left+right and glitch through walls or overflow addresses and make the software go crazy; you can do anything you want with the tools you have available to play your game in an interesting and imaginative way. If people didn't want to see things that were patently ridiculous they'd go watch a speed-run by a live player.
A few months ago I got to talking with an electrical engineer who told me that his final project at the end of his last year of university was to make a programmable controller to help disabled children play video games; he explained the concept in terms of being able to play a fighter game by pushing a single button to input the complicated input sequence necessary to do a move or even a combo.
Thus, I got to thinking about whether it might be possible for such a device to deliver a TAS file directly to the original hardware. If such a thing could be done then there'd be no need to question the authenticity of the emulation because you'd be dealing with the actual console. Likewise, it might provide the community with some interesting publicity if physical demonstrations of the technology could be set up on actual consoles for a live audiences.
There's a console mod community that might be able to do stuff like that but I wonder whether they could make the frequency of the input device synch with the CPU. It probably wouldn't be very useful for TASing in general because I imagine that runs optimized for emulators would de-synch on the original hardware, but it might help to give some indication of how reliable any given emulator actually is and provide for some interesting demonstrations if runs could be optimized for the intended hardware.
At the very least I'd say it's an interesting thought experiment that might help illustration just what TASing actually is beyond the usual vague description of a "god-like player."
I'm not entirely understanding the complaint here. Are ALL resets being described as illegitimate? What about for luck manipulation like in the Final Fantasy II run?
As I see it, the reset button is an intentional feature of the hardware. It's there to be used. What unassisted player hasn't reset their console in order to obtain a more favorable result, RNG related or otherwise? To describe that as hardware "abuse" is beyond my reckoning. The "power" and "reset" buttons are designed to be used during gameplay; that a player might push them at a time at which the developer does not approve is beside the point; nobody anticipated computer programs managing button inputs at 60 Hz either.
For me, all that really matters is that the process is emulated correctly and that corruption runs appear as separate categories that do not obsolete other interesting runs.