Assume that some console game could be made to do things that are not normally possible by using a modified emulator. In other words, an emulator that's not emulating the hardware completely accurately, but has something extra or modified about it. Would that be acceptable?
Because I would consider using a custom driver completely akin to using a modified emulator. It's not something that's done with solely controller input on an unmodified game running on an unmodified machine anymore.
They will refund basically anything for any reason whatsoever, but they haven't (perhaps understandably) not divulged what they consider abuse of the refunding system. It's probably safest not to simply buy hundreds of games and ask for refunds for all of them.
I'm wondering how much longer a 100% items + 100% map run would be compared to the regular 100% items run.
If the difference is relatively small, then... maybe it could be a possibility?
Btw, I was not trying to imply that only highest-rated TASes deserve a star. (After all, I have been for years the most vocal proponent of the Star tier to be pretty much independent of ratings.) I worded my post poorly.
What I meant to imply is that I'm not sure 9 ratings could be considered any kind of consensus, or the sole reason to star a TAS. feos' post seemed to imply that 9 ratings (with an average of 8.5) would be considered this kind of consensus.
Btw, does avidemux simply copy (parts of) the stream from the input file to the output file without re-encoding it?
(One of the major annoyances with most actual video editing software is that they always want to re-encode even if all you are doing is cutting part of a video out and nothing more. Re-encoding in this situation is completely unnecessary, extremely slow, and only degrades the quality of the video for no good reason.)
I judged that it would be allowed:
"I was asked to comment on Strafe50 while turning. Aqfaq's reasoning is sound, it can be compared to left+right. It is not possible to press normally, but it can be accomplished with a modified controller in both cases. The game accepts Strafe50 and turning as valid input when it receives it. This is not true for all input which can be sent, for example sending quicker running input than normally possible makes Doom go "Indigo: is turbo!" to warn viewers/other players that the player Indigo is cheating."
In principle a TAS is legit if you could (at least theoretically) build a device which does nothing more than to connect into the controller port of the console, and supply input to it, and the TAS is thus replicable in the original unmodified console with the original game.
In this case a Doom TAS ought to likewise be such that you could (theoretically) build a device that you connect to the keyboard and mouse ports of the PC, and supply it input that way, and have the TAS replicated on an unmodified PC running an unmodified Doom.
AFAIK that's not the case with strafe50+turning. You cannot build such a device. The demo file contains data that cannot be physically inputted to the game without an unmodified system.
I previously classified this as the same kind of thing as "abusing emulator bugs". However, perhaps a more accurate comparison would be to "make a modified emulator, and abuse it to supply the game with input that's normally not physically possible to be supplied".
Left+right is possible to be supplied to the controller port of an unmodified console running an unmodified game.
Also, has it been actually confirmed that strafe50+turning can be supplied to Doom even with a modified joystick driver? Or is it just hypothetical?
If all of this is correct, then it becomes an interesting question whether a TAS using strafe50-on-turns can be considered legit or not.
Given that the TASes are being published without even a question, I assume the implicit answer is "yes, it is considered legit". Still would have liked to hear an official argument for why, though.
I commented in one of the submission threads that I would almost consider this in the same category as abusing emulator bugs. Of course it's not the exact same thing, but some parallels could be drawn.
Warp, while what you are saying is correct regarding copyright, licensing and such legal matters, that is entirely irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is the notion of adding credit in the form of coauthorship in the site movie rules, which are requirements for a movie publication on this site, not for being legal intellectual property. We are not suing nymx or sending lawyers at him for not coauthoring cpadolf, or anything as silly as that. Legal matters aren't coming into play here.
You misunderstand me. I was simply pre-emptively trying to avoid people throwing accusations of this TASer having "stolen" something from cpadolf or somebody else. It may not be clear to everybody what the usage license of TASes published here is.
Just as a reminder, and to clarify things if they aren't clear (from a kind of more "legal" point of view):
When someone submits a TAS to this site, there's this piece of text alongside the submission button: "By pressing "Save/Edit" you agree to publish this content under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license."
Said license establishes the following permissions:
Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 wrote:
You are free to:
Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms.
So in order to avoid any kind of misunderstandings: Yes, anybody can take any TAS published at tasvideos.org and use it as he or she sees fit, for any purpose whatsoever. The author of the TAS cannot retroactively revoke these freedoms from anybody, no matter how much he or she "owns" the TAS. (By submitting, the author agreed to this license. If the author doesn't agree with it, then he or she shouldn't have submitted in the first place. After submission it's too late to take it back. Again: These freedoms cannot be revoked even by the original author.)
That being said, the same license imposes some restrictions on this usage, namely:
Creative Commons CC BY 2.0 wrote:
Under the following terms:
Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
While it was a mistake to not give credit in the publication text, this has been fixed, so it ought to be ok.
On a more subjective and practical side, the site tries to put a reasonable limit to the amount of different TAS categories for one single game. We don't want one single game having two dozen different categories because it's not very reasonable nor practical.
What is or isn't a good enough new category is highly subjective, of course. Unfortunately the more categories are accepted for a given game, the more difficult it becomes for new categories to be accepted. This might be a bit unfair for future category ideas (because they will be facing a much higher admittance hurdle than the first alternative categories that were submitted for the game), but that's just how it is.
Does this use strafe50 and turning at the same time? If yes, are we just going to ignore the question of whether that should be allowed?
I'd classify it in a similar category as abusing emulator bugs.
abyrvalg mentioned above something that providing the input to Doom such that the end result is strafe50-on-turns would require a specialized joystick software driver or similar. If that's true, then that would mean that it's not possible to get that input to the game via normal means (ie. a normal PC that has its normal/standard OS, drivers and game), even if we allowed an input device that supplies data to the computer that normal keyboard/mice can't produce.
If all of this is correct, then it becomes an interesting question whether a TAS using strafe50-on-turns can be considered legit or not.
(Argument pro: It's input that the game supports, and could theoretically be supplied to it if we allow special drivers/devices.
Argument con: It's input that cannot physically be produced by any existing controller device nor supported by the computer/OS, which is technically speaking against the rules, or at least the principles of TASing.)
Shouldn't TASes always reflect what is physically possible (at least in theory, assuming a perfect player)? In other words, should TASes be always at least in principle "console-verifiable"?
In this particular case, a Doom TAS ought to be acceptable if one could build a device that you connect to the keyboard and mouse ports of a PC that's running doom, and have the machine recreate the TAS by feeding keyboard&mouse input to the PC. (This would be equivalent to a perfect player playing the game.)
If the TAS contains things that cannot be physically replicated with mouse&keyboard input only, then is it acceptable?
Warp, I'm not talking about Star vs Moons. I'm talking about Star vs Newcomer. Star tier is the "watch these first" runs, as you say; but Newcomer tier is also a relatively small list of "watch these first" runs. In other words, exactly the same thing.
I must admit to my slight embarrassment that I had no idea there's such a tier in existence.
I apologize for barging in, as I know next to nothing about Doom's demo file format, but I had similar concerns when the first PC Doom TAS was submitted.
If I understood correctly, the Doom demo file format cannot be tampered with, and it is possible for it to descync if you try. This is because (if I understand correctly) it contains pretty much the equivalent of key presses at each frame.
(This is, AFAIK, unlike eg. Quake's demo file format, where each "frame" simply consists of the world positions and orientations of all objects, and thus could be easily tampered with without causing any kind of desync, and could be hard to distinguish from a legit run.)
Why exactly do we have two "best runs on the site" tiers, again? I get the impression that Star tier has exactly the same purpose as Newcomer tier.
Probably a question of size. The star tier ought to be relatively small in content (because it's a selection of "watch these first" runs). The moon tier has no size limit.
1. Newcomer attention: Lurk no further, watch them all!
2. Stars: Pick your favorites and be surprised.
3. Moons: You're really into it, here is some more of what might entertain you, but we don't guarantee.
4. Vault: Are you really sure you want to dive that deep?
My thought is, if we simply publish any%/100% to one tier, all the rest to another, and let users do the hiding part, or even sort by rating, it won't be as good in promotion as it is now.
One idea that comes to mind that would implement both goals (ie. promote the favorites, and clarify the distinction between the tiers) would be to split the proposed "new vault" tier into two: One containing the favorites and another the rest.
But yeah, I'm just tossing ideas at the wall here and seeing what sticks. I understand if this isn't a very realistic or non-problematic option either.
With the other tier rehaul discussion some time ago I suggested that the vault tier would be elevated from the "trash heap tier" to a privileged tier where only the very best are eligible (ie. the any% and 100% world records; which would mean that they are not in fact eligible for Moon). I don't think vault deserves its current bad rep.
As far as I understand, the forum library being used here is really old and full of defects and shortcomings, but it has been so much modified by the site developers (starting with Bisqwit and then his successors) that it would be a nightmare to try to upgrade to a more recent, better version.
As for your particular problem, have you tried removing the tasvideos.org cookies from your browser (so that it will get a set of fresh ones)? I think at least some such problems can be fixed that way (although I can't know if this is one such case).
Note that that game has an actual story progression an a well defined ending, so I think it fully qualifies for vault.
adelikat wrote:
Most board game speedruns are trivial. No matter how many times Warp argues otherwise, I assure you it is. I could do a NES battle chess or chessmaster TAS in a matter of 15 minutes or so.
Would you be playing them on the hardest difficulty? (I think I have expressed repeatedly that IMO playing such a board game on the easiest difficulty usually has no value and goes completely contrary to the notion of "a perfect player crushing the computer at its best".)
