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Alyosha wrote:
Can an any% run on hardest difficulty be obsoleted by one on easy difficulty if it is faster? Let's assume the run is in the Vault and is unlikely to leave just for simplicity.
Good example: [3042] Genesis Strider by Neofix & Alyosha in 07:22.39 . Would have been several seconds faster on easy, and pretty soundly in the vault.
I think answering this will clear up a lot of questions, at least for me. In particular in the section above difficulty in 'Choose your goals well' it says:
Most games have only one movie, simply going as fast as possible with any means.
Presumably 'any means' includes difficulty setting, does it?
The way I (and a lot of other people) see it, difficulty choice is purely for entertainment purposes. So if a movie's already in Vault or destined for Vault, I would agree that easiest difficulty would be preferred. The thing is, the main point I want to make is that one difficulty should never be absolutely enforced over another, and that people shouldn't judge a run purely by its difficulty. This happened in spades over the recent Spider-Man VS the Kingpin submission, where an entertaining movie got flooded with No votes because of the difficulty choice. That shouldn't be happening in general.
As for difficulties obsoleting each other, it should always be a case-by-case basis. An easier difficulty being faster doesn't always mean a surefire obsoletion, there are multiple different factors that need to come together for that to happen. Likewise, a harder difficulty also doesn't mean a surefire obsoletion for the same reason.
I'm not sure how the other Judges feel, but to me:
* An easier difficulty run has to remove boring repetition to obsolete a harder difficulty run, unless it's a Vault run, in which case it just has to be faster
* A harder difficulty run has to be noticeably more entertaining to obsolete an easier difficulty run, unless it's still not entertaining enough to make Moons, in which case it would be rejected for being slower
* Any non-standard difficulty choice (Easy for Moons, Hard for Vault) should be adequately researched and explained in the submission text
* Any opinion in a submission thread that simply states "I'm voting No because it's not on X difficulty" should be disregarded, as it says nothing about the entertainment value of the movie itself
Hopefully that helps clear things up.
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I've rewritten the Guidelines on difficulty choice based on discussions in this thread, IRC, and recent events in general. It's still technically a draft, so if anyone has any suggestions on things to add or change, feel free to post them here.
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TASeditor wrote:
feos: Updating branch, then saving immidiately after it seems to do some nasty things. The progress bar goes really fast when saving, I'm not sure if it is the same, as it happened to me on v1.11.3, all input files files in the tasproj gone. Since then I look at the progress bar when saving.
Is that what causes that bug to happen? I've had it happen to me pretty frequently as well but I could never tell what caused it, even when trying to manually reproduce it.
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We don't accept runs that get early "bad ends" and whatnot, since it's not technically finishing the entire game. In general, always go for the best ending, or at the very least the one that comes after experiencing the most amount of content within the game.
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Yeah, I'd be switching to Blue for an improvement run. Just wanted to see how Red handled, because damn if I don't love that graceful slide. The improvement will also have a lot more work put into optimizing movement and boss fights and such: Normally I'd at least have the run I'm improving open alongside along with a number of values, but this was just a personal interest check so I didn't bother with the light research.
But yeah, Gunstar needs the most love possible. Sometimes I wonder if anything can be done with the original Genesis TAS... But that's a story for a different day. Or TASer. Probably a different TASer.
EDIT: User movie #28903289443097871
Further testing with Blue, haven't started planning ahead yet. Most of the improvement over the published run is on the first screen.
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GUNSTAR.
Link to videoUser movie #28848621944006843
Damn this is fun to run. This is just a quick test, but I may attempt a full improvement to the published run in the future if I'm still having this much fun with it.
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Temp encoding this as we speak.
I liked the run quite a bit! I wasn't familiar with the game (in fact, I had it confused with Jet Force Gemini at first...), but it works really well for a TAS. Voting Yes.
EDIT: Temp encode is up! HD still processing, but it's watchable right now.
Link to video
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If someone wants to make a GIM run, please do so, post it here for people to watch and study. Who knows, maybe you'll find a way to make it work on console, or maybe you'll find some insane new strat useful in a different category? As of right now, the GIM route on N64 would not be accepted here, and GIM on Virtual Console would... Well, who knows at this point? A run not being accepted/published on the site shouldn't stop anyone from making said run in the first place, though, and no one should discourage anyone else from making those runs for the same reason.
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Welp, question 1 right off the bat: Why (J) over (U)?
I'll temp encode this too I guess okay. Here:
Link to video
EDIT: User movie #28761844779977989
I feel like not enough thought was put into the routing: This basic attempt is 40 frames faster after the first 3 stages, with improvements on the latter two. EDIT2: Stages 4 and 5 are improvable as well... Well, then.
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Update: Mothrayas has gotten the verification file to sync fully, but was unable to get the actual submission to sync. I took another stab at it myself and got the verification file to sync up to the baby fight... but then Dolphin crashed.
We're still working on it, but it may take a while before we can completely confirm whether or not it's syncable. Apologies for the long wait, everyone.
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Just posting here to remind myself to actually update the guide with individual codec links instead of the codec pack I had recommended in the past. Eventually the guilt will overtake me and I'll provide the proper updates.
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Speaking from experience (I tried TASing this when the First 500 thread was first posted) I can safely say that yeah, it's definitely a pain, which makes this even more impressive to me. Haven't had the chance to watch it yet (apart from the turbo-speed sync check of the updated file), but I'm sure it'll be a treat to watch.
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Dimon12321 wrote:
Alternatively, there is a low-quality encode by WebNations.
WebNations has never encoded anything in his life, he just steals our encodes and uploads them for his personal gain. If any YouTube links are missing, it is because they are not hosted on the official channel as of yet. The encoders and publishers are working on it when they're not working on the movies on the Workbench.
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Hey hey, down to sub-20! Sub-10 by the end of the year seems very much doable. Hell, might even be possible to take them all out if we get some more people working.
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Not to mention that BizHawk's N64 support is merely a port of Mupen, since N64 emulation is just horrible and complex in general, so if there's nothing being done to fix the bugs, that's the fault of the original Mupen coders and not the BizHawk devs...
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