I don't really understand why some people even bother creating a list of hundreds of smileys.
Perhaps for similar reasons why people bother writing pages on this website explaining tricks and glitches in video games. The maker thinks it's useful or fun (or whatever other reason) to make it.
Tricks and glitches of games could actually be useful for someone.
The thing about smileys is that there are about 5, at most 10 smileys that people recognize and use regularly. All those lists of hundreds of different smileys may be funny to look at, but they are mostly useless because people don't use them and in most cases don't understand them. I don't really understand why some people even bother creating a list of hundreds of smileys.
By this logic, the questions would be worth answering if they had been asked by anyone besides xebra.
No, I wrote it as an *additional* good reason not to answer them. Reason number 2 would all in itself be enough, IMO.
Of course, I'm still fuzzy as to how answering questions as asked is more likely to trigger a flamewar than ignoring the questions and insulting the asker.
He was insulted because of his derogatory style and his use of insulting words, especially when writing about something which is important to some people.
Xebra was asking specifically for bisqwit's perspectives.
Personally I doubt that. Sure, he addressed the questions to him, but IMO not because he wanted to know Bisqwit's opinion specifically, but just as a generic attack on christianity. Bisqwit was simply a handy target for an attack when he expressed his fait in this kind of thread.
Even if his attitude is abrasive, the questions are worth asking, and answering. At least let the record of them remain.
There are two reasons why I disagree:
1) From his way of writing it's quite clear that he doesn't want to honestly discuss about these things, he only wants to attack other people's faith, he wants to troll. This means that answering the questions is useless: He won't read the answers. And by "read" I mean "try to honestly, without strong prejudices, to understand what the other person is saying, without the pre-intention to nitpick about every single detail". He basically just wants a flamewar, not answers to his questions. His wording makes it quite clear.
2) As I commented earlier in the thread, these questions have been asked and answered a million times during past centuries already. There's little point in repeating all that here. I'm sure that if anyone honestly wants to know what has been said about them (which I highly doubt is the case with xebra) they can do a google search.
(With point 2 I don't mean that anyone should automatically accept the answers given to the questions. My point is that it would be useless to repeat the same answers here.)
Answering these trolling question is only going to cause this thread to become an endless flamewar. It's useless. Skip it.
This basically discredits your entire post. It is there, black and white, clear as crystal etc etc etc etc etc blah blah blah that they do not aim primarily for speed, but entertainment
You are taking one single sentence out of its context (both the rest of the page and the time when it was written, which was the time with the heaviest badmouthing against tool-assisted runs). At least you partially admit the fact:
although it does however say that they are timeattacks simply because going slow and being inefficient (doing nothing with time as opposed to progressing or doing something interesting) is boring, which is not entertaining.
The goal of TASes is entertainment, of course. It's a self-evident truth. If it wasn't entertaining making and watching them, nobody would make them in the first place. TASes are entertaining for the same reason as regular speedruns are. Why do you think regular speedruns are so popular?
I have said this like 50 times already in the past, but "aims for entertainment" and "aims for speed" are not mutually exclusive goals. They are goals at rather different abstraction levels: The entertainment goal is at a much higher conceptual level. It's the reason *why* these videos are made. They are made *because* it's entertaining. That's the whole goal. Now, *how* they are made entertaining is a different issue. This is an implementation detail, it's a more concrete concept. In the vast majority of cases the *how* is speed: Entertainment is achieved using speed. The videos are not made *because* they are fast, they are made *because* they are entertaining. It's a different conceptual category.
This is in no way different from the regular speedrunning community. It's the exact same thing there.
Sure, there are publications where the main goal is not speed. This is usually the case with games where there's little to be gained (in entertainment or basically anything else) with speed. When speed is not the "how" to achieve entertainment, then other goals can be used. A constant-speed side-scroller is the most prominent example of this because you *can't* speed it up. In that case entertainment can be achieved by other means (things which are impossible for a human to do).
I'm a black and white kind of person, and your middle ground approach just seems as dumb as Truncated's halfpublishing of Super Metroid IngameTimerVersion.
You have still not answered the question of what is it exactly that you want.
I think that most agree that the runs should be flawless (hence some people's fixation on the term "superplay"). It would be quite difficult to argument why a run which wastes frames for no good purpose would be "flawless". If you are going to achieve a goal, at least try to achieve it as perfectly as possible. Wasting time for no good reason is not perfection.
Apparently you don't want this. Then what is it that you want?
The purpose of that page was to debunk all the badmouthing which was abundant in the first years of the site. People were crying that the movies were fake, ie. that people were trying to pass emulator-runs for real ones.
The page is basically saying "no, we are not trying to compete with the speedrunning community, we are not trying to show any skill, we are doing these only for entertainment purposes, not to compete with anyone, not to discredit any legit speedruns, not to break any speedrunning records".
That page was not written to say "we are not aiming for speed". If you interpret it like that, you are simply wrong. I was there when the page was written and I even made suggestions to it. I know what Bisqwit was thinking when he wrote the first drafts of that page.
AKA's reply makes me chuckle. "How could anyone possibly enjoy something else?"
I just can't understand what is it that you want.
This site is about tool-assisted speedruns. Has always been, from day 1. Completing games as fast as possible. Entertainment yes, preferably, even if sacrificing a few frames increases considerably entertainment, but the main goal is to still complete the game as fast as possible (even if some restrictions are put in the goals for entertainment purposes). Basically any single frame wasted for no good purpose is seen as sloppy play and frowned upon. That's exactly what the goal is: To achieve the goal of the run with perfection, flawlessly, without wasting anything.
It's not only the number of frames which is optimized. For example, if taking damage does not affect the length of the run in any way, but there's absolutely no reason to take damage (not even for entertainment purposes), then taking damage is seen as a flaw: There's no advantage, and taking damage can be seen as sloppy play. Thus a takes-no-damage run is preferable to a "do whatever you want" run, if in both cases the number of frames would be the same. The reason is usually quite simple: It's more "difficult" to play the entire game through taking absolutely no damage than to sloppily take it when the runner is lazy and can't be bothered to avoid it.
Or let's take luck manipulation, for instance. In many cases luck manipulation is not done exclusively to shorten the run, but also because it's cool, especially to someone who has played the game and knows how it works. For example, getting a heart for each single kill in Castlevania2 can be seen as quite a feat by someone who has played the game and knows how rarely the hearts appear. Or walking long distances in a RPG without getting any random encounters.
But seemingly this is not what you want. What is it that you want?
I suggested that what you want are machinima videos. Videos made from games, which could be eg. sketch comedy, a music video, or whatever. But this is not what you want either?
Then what is it that you want?
But, for the record, I am still in favor of some precedent being set that it is not okay to lie or fudge data in your submission, no matter how unimportant the fudged statistic.
IMHO faking the rerecord count is reprehensible if because of it the movie ends in the MovieStatistics page, especially if it wouldn't end there with the real value.
IMHO if the author obviously fakes the rerecord count, it should be set to 0 before publication (IIRC the MovieStatistics page ignores rerecord amounts of 0).
I'm not.
I can certainly see why you would think so, though. It's that several people have tried to answer the dilemma with something I think does not really answer it (refer to my "how do cars advance" analogy), and I respond to these answers correspondingly. Either I don't see the connection between the given answer and the dilemma, or there simply is no such connection. Either way, me dissenting with the answers might be seen as "trolling", although it isn't. It just means that I don't think the answer is correct (because I don't understand it or because it indeed is not correct).
Information is not magical, and spouting stuff like "information has no energy" or whatever you said a few posts back doesn't make any sense at all.
I'm not sure I understand what you mean with that. Do you mean that information *has* energy? Or do you mean something completely different?
Anyway, I don't really know what else to say since I don't actually understand what you think the problem is.
The dilemma I just can't understand is that something *more* than just mass/energy is being transferred from one person to another, but I have difficulty in grasping what this something is.
I suppose the most sensible answer I have got so far about what is this "something more" that is being transferred is "structure". Structure is this "something else than mass/energy" that is being transferred.
However, what I find fascinating is the nature of "structure". What is it? How do you define its existence? It's relatively easy to measure and describe mass and energy, but how do you measure and describe structure? The fact that the structure seems physically so intangible in the case of text transferring information from one person to another doesn't help understanding its nature.
I think that's the core problem here. As long as there isn't even an attempt at mutual understanding the discussion is pointless.
It's not my problem if you refuse to explain yourself better. Note that I'm not supposed to read your mind.
I can only deduce that there are two possibilities:
1) You know what I'm saying but you are deliberately nitpicking, just for the sake of argument.
2) You are stupid and you honestly don't understand what I'm saying.
I'm assuming option number 1. Thus it's useless to continue.
How about putting your effort in improving the normal run, because, if I recall correctly, it would obsolete the current normal run and the Peach run since that one is unnecessary.
Would it really be all that bad to have a princess-only run? People are constantly complaining about lack of entertainment in the runs. Personally I find the princess-only run entertaining. I might be alone with that opinion, though.
(And no slippery slopes, please. We don't have to start accepting "character x -only runs" just because we have one "princess-only" run. It's perfectly possible to have this single category without having to accept other similar ones. It's not like it would hurt anyone.)
In fact, I miss old times with long submission quees and disputable movies, when it was possible to perform something suboptimal (e.g. play with funny glitches that make you lose several frames) and not to be afraid that someone suddenly walks in and improves your run by simply eliminating all those "flaws".
Exactly when was that? I have been closely following this site from day 1, and runs have been obsoleted by faster runs all the time. I don't remember there ever been a general policy that "it's safe to submit suboptimal runs, nobody can obsolete them". In fact, the policy has always been quite strict on the opposite side: If someone obsoletes your run with a significantly faster one, bad luck. I do have personal experience.
(Yes, yes, insert here the few exceptions to the rule. I know them. No need to repeat them again. I'm talking about the general default policy.)
Today you have to forget everything and aim on Frame Counter, or you'll lose to someone less principled.
Well, that's exactly the whole idea of a tool-assisted speedrun: They aim for perfection. The goal is to see what would happen to a speedrun if the flawed human element was removed from the equation. Frame perfection is one of the main goals to aim for. It has always been like this. (Ok, before frame advance became widely used achieving frame perfection was more difficult, but it was still a goal to aim for, from day 1.)
Now there's much less room for art in TASes than it was before. I'm not content with where this is going.
"Where this is going." It never ceases to amuse me how some people seem to think that the goals have somehow changed and that they were different in the past.
What has changed is not the goals but the quality of the tools: Today we have frame advance, ram watchers and even robots, which didn't exist in the first years. This raises the quality requirements of the runs. It means that it's easier to remove flaws from the runs.
This is begging a question: how to define alternative routes, and what routes to take so that the speedrun wouldn't lose its value? What if there are alternative routes inside one room, maybe inside each room (often seen in puzzle games like Mighty Bomb Jack)? What constitutes sloppy play in this context?
Alternative routes which make sense. Castlevania 3 with its three possible routes is a perfect example. All three movies are completely valid speedruns.
I don't really understand. To you, a run is undisputably faster if it uses less frames. What's the point of a longer run then? Why even bother publishing it?
A run *with a certain goal* is undisputably faster than another run *with that same goal* if the former uses less frames. Two runs of the same game with *different* goals cannot be compared.
Also, how many goals does a speedrun have, and how many can it have before it becomes a superplay by the above definition?
Odd question. A game can have as many goals as makes sense. There are many goals in many games which are very sensible and logical. That's the reason why there are many games with several published runs: They are all valid, legit tool-assisted speedruns of that game, each one with a different goal.
Of course I see where you are going with this. You want to nitpick on "where do you draw the line between a goal that makes sense and one which doesn't?" It doesn't really matter where the "line" is: It's quite clear that some goals do obviously make sense and some others don't. For example "don't use the warp glitch to skip 90% of the game" is a goal which makes sense. For the border cases, let the voters and judges decide.
Example. Dragonfangs's first Metroid Fusion 0% TAS done for m2k2 community aimed for traversing each room in most impressive ways and taking no damage. Is this a speedrun? What would you say if such a run was submitted here?
If it didn't aim for the fastest time to achieve those goals, it can hardly be called a speedrun. However, if it wastes time for no good reason (not even for entertainment purposes) then I wouldn't call it flawless either.
Warp wrote:
Besides, why would a "superplay" automatically choose the other route? Would the shorter route not be a "superplay"?
Because there's nothing interesting in the shorter route. You can't get to showcase your skill in the linear, easier route — be it tool-assisted or otherwise. Otherwise it would be a bad superplay.
Now you are introducing some new definition to the concept of "superplay": A run is not a "superplay" if it's "boring". That's a rather fuzzy definition, I would say.
I can't understand what is it that makes the fastest route not a "superplay" if it has been performed flawlessly.
If you extend it to "complete the game in shortest time possible with additional restrictions put on it", I'm afraid you'll have to elaborate on the restrictions and which of them are or aren't acceptable.
I'll have to elaborate or else I'm wrong? That doesn't make any sense.
And I already elaborated by mentioning QdQ. What else do you want?
What? Coming from SDA and being part of the Quake community, I can tell you precisely that speed is indeed the only goal. Sure, there's different categories of speedrun (100% etc. etc.), but within that category, speed rules all.
You are saying exactly the same thing as I. The original claim was that a "speedrun" allows one and only one run of the game: The fastest possible. As you also noted, not true: a 100% run is not the fastest possible, yet still a speedrun.
First of all, you're focusing on time again. Note that I'm talking about superplay — something you wanted somebody to define — which doesn't by default imply fastest completion.
I'm not *focusing* on speed. I'm saying that wasting time for no reason is a flaw. Thus a flawless run cannot do that.
Imagine a game with two routes to take, one is shorter, linear, and easier; second is longer, twisted and harder. Obviously a superplay would go with the second route because it allows more interesting stuff to showcase. Speedrun is confined to the first, since time is its primary objective.
That's simply not true. Speedruns can have different goals. Just go look at the myriad of QdQ speedruns. Would you not call the hard-mode QdQ a speedrun simply because it's not as fast as the easy-mode QdQ? Of course not. The former is also a speedrun because it tries to complete the game as fast as possible, with a specific goal (complete it using hard mode).
Or would you not call the 100% QdQ a speedrun because it's significantly slower than the any-% speedrun? Of course it's a speedrun. It just has a specific goal: Kill all monsters and find all secrets, and do that as fast as possible.
Speedrunning an alternative route is still speedrunning even if the other route is faster.
Why is it that every single time this issue comes up, someone will draw this "a speedrun has only one goal" card? It's just not true. Not in the regular speedrunning community nor here.
A speedrun is not less of a speedrun if you put some limitations to it (eg. "choose this route" or "collect all items").
Besides, why would a "superplay" automatically choose the other route? Would the shorter route not be a "superplay"?
This generic distinction is exactly what makes the difference and exactly what makes Xkeeper so sad. Superplay purposefully chooses more interesting ways of doing stuff, whereas such a choice doesn't stand for a speedrun (which is actually a problem of speedruns).
Perhaps *your* definition of "speedrun" is like that. However, it's not the definition of the speedrunning community. Just go to the QdQ site.
Insisting that it means that doesn't make it so. You can repeat "speedrun has only one goal" like a mantra if you want, but that doesn't make it true.
Flawless means "the player doesn't do what he doesn't want to do", which implies lack of any deviations from the movie creator's plan. As long as the plan itself is defined, definition of flawlessness will come after it.
In the vast majority of games I have hard time thinking about a definition of "flawless" which would not include "don't waste any time". After all, if you are going to make the run slower than it could be, you will be wasting frames doing nothing on purpose. You could as well not waste those frames in order to make the run better, more flawless. (And if wasting the frames was not made on purpose then it would simply be sloppy play.)
Even in games where goal is not a pure "minimize the number of frames to complete the game" time is still not wasted for nothing. Even when implementing the goal no time is wasted. The goal is performed as fast as possible, without wasted frames, without sloppy play. Thus it can be defined as a speedrun (with a specific goal). Wasting frames for nothing would be a flaw.
Superplay is an act or a result of [near-]flawless completion of a game or its segment, aimed at showcasing superior playing skills and knowledge of the game. Would that be good enough?
Could a "flawless" run be longer than necessary (iow. have unnecessary delays)? If the answer is yes, then it all comes down to the definition of "flawless". I think it's difficult to define it so that you are not simply defining a (perfect) speedrun.
(For example, if you define "flawless" as "beats the game by taking no damage", then a 5-hour SMB run could be "flawless" by that definition, but certainly wouldn't comply with common sense.)
Maybe the structure? For example, if you take a type writer, it has a certain amount of mass and energy. If you disassemble it, it still has the same amount of mass and energy, but it no longer works.
But the reason why it doesn't work can be explained with physics: Forces no longer act in the required way and energy is no longer transmitted in the required way for the typewriter to work as intended.
However, there are no forces nor energy in a certain pattern of ink on a paper (compared to some other pattern).
