So, let me get this straight....
You've made 5 multi-paragraph posts in this thread, and you expect people to take your opinion as valid, and you didn't even take the time to watch the movie?
Seriously, you've just lost all credibility in this thread, because you haven't even seen the source material for which you are arguing over. Do you even care about TASes, or are you on this site just to argue?
So, let me get this straight...
Discussing a rule of the website which applies to cheat codes supported by the game itself is invalid if I haven't watched a certain run? Exactly how does that make any sense?
Exactly how would watching the run change anything I have written? Do runs get special exceptions of the rules if they look good enough or something? Could this be applied to other rules as well? Do, for example, using GameGenie codes become a valid form of TASing if the run looks cool enough?
If you read what I wrote again, I was asking what this debug menu is and what can be done with it, and as a side note I commented that in my opinion if the debug menu can be used for entering cheat codes in the same way as you can do with a cheating device such as GameGenie, it would make the technique invalid and against the rules.
(And btw, what's with the "multi-paragraph" thing? I don't really get it. Why does that need to be mentioned? Is the number of paragraphs in a post somehow significant? What difference would it make if I had made all my posts using one single paragraph?)
Limne wrote:
I find it difficult to believe that people are referring to the debug menu as a "cheat code." Did any of you even watch what happened?
The TASer messed around with memory addresses using glitches until they gained access to a debug menu, a development tool inside the code left over from production. That's not a cheat.
Could you please define what makes the Konami code a cheat, while such a debug menu (which I assume allows you to do similar things to a GameGenie device) isn't a cheat? Does the definition of "cheat" involve how difficult it is to access the code? If the code is hard to access, then it's not a cheat, but if it's trivial to access, then it is. Where do you draw the line?
As I suggested earlier, would the Konami code stop being a cheat if it was more difficult to access? If yes, could you please explain why? I just can't grasp the logic.
We already have runs that allow players to mess around with a game's memory (CT comes to mind...).
Personally I'm not very fond of runs that use save data corruption, for reasons I have explained in other threads. I view them as borderline hardware cheating.
The only thing difference in this game is that there are better tools to manipulate inside the game's code.
It may be just me, but I would consider that an aggravating fact, not an alleviating one (for the exact same reason why the Konami code is banned).
There is a world of difference between manipulating intentional "cheats" inside the GAME and memory addresses inside the CODE. There's a difference between pressing A and B on the title screen 50 times to see the credits roll and using a glitch to access a command in the game's memory that causes the same ending to appear. There is not a difference between the latter and using a glitch to access developer tools buried deep within the code (a debug menu) to access the same command.
So your stance is, indeed, that if the cheat code is difficult to access, it becomes acceptable?
Was it really necessary to post that many repeated lines? You could have cut the excessive lines and replaced them with a note telling that there were lots of the same line repeated.
But in the relevant section in the rules, it says "Check places such as YouTube or nicovideo for TAS movies (or speedruns)", suggesting that TAS records must be broken. Can somebody clarify?
I understand it to mean that if your goal is to beat the game as fast as possible, then your time must be faster than anything anybody else has ever done before (either unassisted or tool-assisted, and without rule-breaking cheating, of course). If there's a run of the game at SDA or at Twin Galaxies, your run must be faster. If there's a TAS either at tasvideos.org or somewhere else (and in the latter case it doesn't break the tasvideos.orgs rules), your run must be faster (although certain exceptions can be made in some cases, eg. if your run uses the U ROM while that other TAS used the J ROM).
Furthermore, would a SM64 120-star run have to at least match all single-star records? Would a full-game run in general have to match all single-level records?
Runs in different categories are independent. A 100% run doesn't need to beat individual goals (such as individual levels) faster than a any% run, if there's a good reason for that (usually, beating a sub-goal slower is necessary to make the overall run faster because that slower sub-goal allows making later parts of the game faster).
The any% run could be referred to in order to point out deficiencies in the 100% run, though. (For example, someone could point out that the any% run uses some glitch that the submitted 100% run doesn't, and ask why that is so. If there's no good reason for the 100% to not to use the same glitch, it could be grounds for rejection because the 100% run would be suboptimal.) However, in general, the 100% run must only beat other 100% runs.
(so the catridge contained about 350 games in total, maybe only 280... I'm really not sure)
I wonder how that is possible. According to Wikipedia the largest Gameboy cartridge has a capacity of 1 MB. For 350 games that would leave slightly less than 3 kilobytes per game.
Well, I suppose many games of the time did not take a lot of space, but even then 3 kilobytes still sounds a bit too little (although my personal experience of that time is mainly from the ZX Spectrum, where games would typically take at least 40 kilobytes, some would take as much as 120 kilobytes, and this is just for games which loaded to RAM entirely in one go, rather than being multi-part games).
Have you even actually watched this movie, or are you just arguing? It does exactly that....
So now cheat codes which jump straight to the end of the game are allowed? When was this principle changed? I remember the time when this was considered to make the entire point of the run rather moot.
(And before someone argues that that one pokemon run also jumps straight to the end of the game from almost the beginning, two points: 1) There's a difference: It's not using a cheat code to do that. 2) Personally I find the entire concept of that run a bit dubious, especially since it uses save corruption which is something I don't really like as it feels almost like using a cheating device, but that's just my opinion.)
If you scale eg. a 320x200 original video material (which is supposed to have an aspect ratio of 4:3) into, let's say 1024x768 (using stretching), then you will be basically emulating what a CRT supporting the latter resolution is doing when the graphics card is sending it a 320x200 pixels image. The blurriness/pixel doubling caused by the uneven stretching is minimized when the final image has a much higher resolution than the original.
Of course it also means that the video would then have to be distributed in that 1024x768 resolution (scaling it down to eg. 320x240 would "antialias" the image, probably in an undesirable way).
If abusing the debug menu is officially allowed, then where do we set the limit of what can be done with it?
I don't know what can be in actuality done with the debug menu in this game, but let's assume for the sake of an example that you could jump right to the ending using it. Would that be acceptable?
If not, then where do we draw the line? Why is one cheat acceptable but not another?
That doesn't seem to be a problem having into account that stars were granted to TASes like this or this.
The role of special stars was not always well-understood to be "ideal movies for new users of the site to enjoy, to get them into the TAS genre." Anyway, the mistakes of the past, yadda yadda, etcetera, etcetera.
There's nothing wrong in having a few overly glitched examples for the newcomers. Let's just keep their amount moderate.
unless you created the game, glitches are found by chance.
If by "chance" you mean that you stumble across the glitch while playing or TASing the game regularly, that's not always the case. Often people will deliberately try to glitch the game by trying several things. For example if they notice that certain parts of the level "push" the character to one side a bit (to avoid letting them go into the wall), one could try finding locations where this could be abused (eg. by making the game push the character out of the screen, which could have all kinds of funny consequences, eg. because the collision detection stops working when the character wraps around the screen).
(Years ago I found a glitch in Jekyll&Hyde precisely by doing that. When there's a higher platform in some levels, if you jump onto the corner of the platform, not enough to get onto the platform, but enough to touch it, it will push you backwards a bit. If scroll the screen so that you leave a gap between the edge of the platform and the left edge of the screen which is just right, and you do a jump just in the right way, you can make the playable character zip through the floor, go out of the lower edge of the screen and wrap around at the upper right corner. I found this glitch by deliberately trying to find it.)
I hate it when people assume that every AFGNCAAP is a stoic badass just because they don't talk. Gah.
OTOH, if you are going to add characterization to your heroic mime, at least try to make the character likable. I think that this has been the main objection in this thread. (Of course I can't give a personal opinion because I don't even own a Wii, much less have played the game.)
Now if the Konami code was a glitch, and it gave you superpowers? That's a different story. It's not an intentional button input under certain circumstances, now... it's become a chance occurance, the accidental access of code due to luck and random coding.
I'm not sure you understood what I was saying. Please read my example again.
To recapitulate: The so-called "konami code" is an intentional cheat that Konami put into many of their games. It isn't just a random glitch that just happens to give you immunity or whatever the code does in a specific game. It has been deliberately coded into the game to give you that cheat. Using this kind of purposeful cheat is generally forbidden by the rules because it makes the TASing rather moot and pointless.
Now, and this is the most important point, it doesn't matter how the konami code is being triggered, it's still forbidden. Even if you trigger it by abusing some glitch it doesn't make it any more acceptable. It's the cheat that is forbidden, not the way in which the cheat is triggered. In other words, it's not the "up up down down etc" key combination that is forbidden by the rules; it's triggering the cheat at all, whatever the means. Triggering it unconventionally doesn't change its status as a forbidden cheat. As I said in my previous post, even if Konami had disabled the key combination at the last minute (but left the routine itself intact), it wouldn't change anything.
Likewise this debug menu is, rather obviously, in the exact same category as the konami code: It's a cheating routine deliberately coded into the game. Again, it doesn't matter how you are triggering it: You are still cheating.
Of course the rules leave the door open for allowing exceptions, which is the interesting point of discussion here. However, in my personal opinion this debug menu thing sounds exactly like a "konami code" of sorts and should be considered in the exact same category.
"Discussion board rules are enforced where applicable (for example, asking for ROM links or providing them is not allowed)" That does not say anything about hacks.
I know, I'm just some random guy, so feel free to ignore this, but hacks are roms. Distributing patches is fine though, as they don't contain any copyrighted material.
It's not that simple. Even if a patch contained 100% purely original material by the patch creators, it would still be a legally fuzzy area because it could be argued as being a derivative work. In most jurisdictions copyright law also covers derivative works (which is what makes most fanfiction technically illegal, even though they don't necessarily contain any significant portion of the original work verbatim). Game copyrights are also often strengthened with trademarks, which makes it even more difficult for patch-makers to not to break any such law (at least technically).
Of course many game companies turn a blind eye to such patches, but that's certainly not true with all of them. For example Square/Enix is a rather infamous example of a company which did not turn a blind eye on a very anticipated fan-made patch of Chrono Trigger (Crimson Echoes). Even though the patch didn't technically speaking contain any copyrighted material in itself, Square/Enix could have still made a case on the grounds of it being a derivative work, so the patch makers resigned.
Distributing the patch and the prepatched rom should be even worse, as it's easily possible to get 100% of the original rom from that.
As someone already commented, just because you know which bytes were changed doesn't mean that you know what the original bytes were.
moozooh wrote:
I loathe the utterly hypocritical state communities like this all end up in in order to save themselves from legal persecution. We all know what this is about, no matter what we are pretending to do or not to do in order to make and watch TASes and engage in related activities. Every party involved in any way does.
Well, creating an emulator keypress record file is not illegal. You can suspect that an illegal copy of the game was used in the making of that record file, but such a suspicion is not enough to file a lawsuit. You can't sue people because they might have used an illegal copy of the game, if you don't have any kind of proof.
So it doesn't matter how "hypocritical" you think this attitude is. It's legally safe, and that's what matters.
(Of course a completely different matter is that distributing the videos themselves is, technically speaking, illegal because they contain copyrighted music and graphics.)
There's a crucial difference, I think, between a well-known cheat code and a glitch abused to access something clearly not intended for use by players. The Konami cheat code analogy doesn't really work here, because it's something the developers knowingly left available to players... it isn't showing off anything really impressive. This, by contrast, shows an abuse of game mechanics to achieve a result never intended by the programmers. To me, that's an example of superplay.
I'm still not really convinced.
Suppose that Konami had published a game where they intended to have their classic cheat-code, but then at the last minute they decided to disable it, so it would not be accessible via normal play (eg. by simply changing the jump opcode which is triggered by entering the cheat code into a nop instead of jumping to the cheat routine, or whatever). Also suppose that the cheat routine could nevertheless still be executed by abusing a glitch. Would it become acceptable?
IMO it wouldn't become any more acceptable. It would still be the konami code, even though it's being triggered by unconventional means.
So the question is: If the debug menu would be officially accessible via normal gameplay, would abusing it be acceptable as per the rules (and the general principles of TASing)? IMO its acceptance doesn't change if it's being triggered by unconventional means any more than triggering a hypothetical disabled konami code would.
The debug menu is definitely unreachable without the glitch (and without a Game Genie - the only other way to get to it); whatever means were originally used to access it were disabled when the game was released.
This probably does count as an exception to the rule, since the debug menu cannot be accessed without extraordinary measures. Of course, I can't make the call myself, but that's my opinion.
Personally I think that using such a debug menu to "cheat" in the game is completely equivalent to using a cheat-key (such as the Konami code). It makes absolutely no difference how the cheat is entered (ie. whether there's legitimate support in the game or whether it's done via a glitch). The Konami code (for Konami games supporting it) is forbidden for a good reason, and the same reasons apply to this case as well, IMO. The Konami code wouldn't become any more acceptable if it was triggered using a glitch.
The other question is, do either of them deserve a star? Why rush in to star a publication just so we have a starred arcade game. Why not wait for a few more games before deciding that The simpsons (for instance) does indeed deserve a star.
I think that the idea is: "Want to see a TAS of an arcade game? Check this one."
It's not so much about the quality compared to the best TASes. It's about presenting a variety of TASes for different platforms. Remember, once again, that the star is not a measurement of quality. It's a suggestion for newcomers.
It's not that I don't admire the sheer amount of work and TASing prowess needed to run 8 games at the same time, but personally I would prefer seeing a multi-TAS of 2 games (it doesn't really matter which two) where the effort is put into making them "synchronize" as much as possible (in other words, as far as it's physically possible, make both characters in the two games move in the same way, or at least similarly, so that it becomes more obvious that the same input is indeed being used in both runs). In other words, IMO effort should be put into making an awesome 2-game multi-TAS than trying to TAS as many games as possible. The former would be more entertaining and interesting (the latter would only be chaotic and hard to follow).
The "featured movie" section on the main page might be broken somehow.
The movie in question was arkanoid, and in the description, where it's cut short and there's a link "Read More", the link was broken and pointed to "http://tasvideos.org/B... <a href="
Edit: It's still broken.
Maybe they were so absolutely dazzled by the sheer awesomeness of this run that they accidentally hit the "no" choice in their confusion. They are still recovering from the orgastic experience which is why they haven't posted about the mistake.
