Well, its finally here. I present to you the first Nintendo DS Tool Assisted Speedrun. The emulator used is DeSmuME 9.2rr which can be found here.
You can watch the movie via youtube part1, part 2, part3. Thanks to paul_t!

Notes

  • Getting the flag at the bottom is faster than the top.
  • 1-1 - I slowdown at the end in order to manipulate the flying ? on the map screen. This is necessary in order to get the blue shell
right away.
  • 8-4 - I take damage in order to avoid fireworks. Also I wanted to take damage to lose the blue shell so that I have some levels
without an overpowered item. The blue shell is less impressive in the basic "run to the right" levels.
  • 8-6 - More slowdown to avoid fireworks.

Time comparisons to the 23:55 console speedrun (by SDA timing).

Since I wasn't able to compare frames to a speedrun, I used the game clock. For reference, the speedrun can be found
Time remaining in each level. Speedrun vs TAS.
  • 1-1 370 370
  • 1-2 353 356
  • 1-C 450 463
  • 5-1 362 363
  • 5-2 362 363
  • 5-G 321 328
  • 8-1 268 268
  • 8-2 243 247
  • 8-F 440 447
  • 8-3 302 306
  • 8-4 264 265
  • 8-F 472 476
  • 8-5 265 268
  • 8-6 353 366
  • 8-7 354 359
  • 8-8 371 374
  • 8-F2 325 325

Special Thanks

  • The rest of the desmume rerecording branch team: Paul_t and Zeromus
  • choronorox for his very impressive speed run
  • The rest of the desmume team who have really turned around this emulator and turned it into something nice.

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Player (98)
Joined: 3/20/2008
Posts: 466
Location: Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Rationale: On this site, publication is slightly better thing than no publication.
That justifies accepting practically any sub-par submission.
This movie is, at least slightly, entertaining -- and the ratings seem to support this. Average entertainment rating currently is 5.8, which is better than "average".
Are you actively encouraging that the site should lower its standards? Explain why this rationale isn’t used on many other runs of equivalent quality that don’t make it through.
If you are angry at this movie being published despite its quality, go ahead and obsolete it.
Again, this is like encouraging sloppy runs to be accepted and published because it can later be obsoleted.
I published this movie to draw more attention to the birth of DS TASing.
If you this were your intent, then there should be more emphasis than the average movie on this submission having excellent quality, so it can be used as a role model of what the site represents. Drawing a lot of attention towards unpolished and only mildly entertaining runs is not going to help the site’s reputation, even if it does display that TASing is expanding across newer systems. Though, what really bothers me is how much of a “sellout” this whole notion is. The game being run on a new system doesn’t dictate preferential treatment in its judging process, and doing this purposely for views is not really any better than a television show sexing up their female characters to increase ratings. A flawed analogy perhaps, but hopefully you get the idea.
I've already admitted this. It didn't matter about the votes in this case, or the precendent, or anything like that.
I can see that Warp’s criticisms about un-democratic voting are being substantiated.
If you think I am going to make a habit of publishing my own movies, you are wrong.
That PCE Dragon Egg run is rather curious.
Also I consulted both mmbossman and bisqwit and got a green light from both of them.
They’re using the same flawed reasoning as you though, so I wouldn’t call that justification.
Think of this as simply a promotional video.
You couldn’t post this as a demo, or in the DS forums as a test run or something? Hell, just submitting it for people to see it was promotional enough. As I said before, this is abuse of power, this is selling out for views, and there’s nothing accomplished by having a poor promotional video unless you’re looking to tarnish the site’s reputation.
a more variety of movies and less concern about it being so optimized before it can be published.
Just because this is a DS run doesn’t mean it made for a very unique viewing experience. And when did the site ever not have much emphasis on technical quality and optimization?
Joined: 4/3/2005
Posts: 575
Location: Spain
adelikat wrote:
I've already said I would have published this movie if it weren't mine. If you don't want to take my word for that, then I think we are done discussing this. You've already made up your mind no matter what I say.
This is taken for granted, because you wouldn't have submitted it if you didn't thought it was publish worthy, under a TAS judge criteria. : D I want to think the criticism here is that you should have waited some days to allow yourself to look the video with fresh eyes, or leave another person to judge it with the same fresh eyes. I know I have to wait at least a week to start perceiving flaws in my own works that constant exposure had hid from my sight. Maybe this run might have needed an update before publication (I can't say because I'm not trained to see improvements) Of course, I also understand people that think oneself shouldn't be at the same time "judge and jury", which is a correct stance if there are reasons to think one might look first for oneself instead of everyone. I believe this wasn't the case, and if adelikat accepted the unoptimized run was more because a misjudgement than malice. It doesn't mean he was right, but it's a issue that can be fixed without harming others.
No.
IST
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 103
adelikat wrote:
If you think I am setting the precedent to publish movies that have known improvement then you would be....right. I don't know if you noticed but things have gotten more lax on TASvideos regarding that.
... Well, that says it all, really. The site has begun a slow decline. Wonderful.
Joined: 2/26/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: Minnesota
Jesus. Arguing with Warp and IST is as bad as trying to argue with PETA. Everyone, give it the fuck up. 9 pages is more than enough.
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
IST
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 103
Sticky wrote:
Jesus. Arguing with Warp and IST is as bad as trying to argue with PETA. Everyone, give it the fuck up. 9 pages is more than enough.
I thought I'd made it obvious with my last post, but as I mentioned earlier, I am brain fried. I have withdrawn from the debate. Any more at this point would be useless and cause needless drama, IMO. It's one thing if the drama could be productive in the end. It's another if it'd just lead to flame wars and nothing else.
Joined: 12/16/2005
Posts: 69
I was going to post something among the lines of "hey, cool, a DS TAS", but yeah. I reckon that any new visitors brave enough to check out the discussion thread linked to this TAS won't be coming back <_<; Also, the link to the emulator's page seems to be broken.
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland
Rick wrote:
If this is the case, I don't think that this was done maliciously.
I can't deny that I let my anger overwhelm my common sense, and that I blew things completely out of proportion. While some things here might have been a bit dubious, my behavior was not proper. I would like to apologize for my behavior. I shouldn't have gone so extreme with this. This will (once again) teach me that I should think things overnight before posting anything inflammatory. Now that I have reviewed the whole thing, I feel rather ashamed of myself.
Former player
Joined: 6/25/2004
Posts: 607
Location: Maine
I'm not going to fault you on it, Warp. Even if you did go a bit overboard, you did feel you have a right to be concerned and that's alright. You were looking out for the site in your own way, and in that respect, I do find it admirable. Two different ways of love for the site, though they clashed. It's unfortunate that there was a lot of fighting, but I think things are going to be better for it. Perhaps maybe you could give TASing this a try, even? I'd like to see what you can do with this.
Lord_Tom
He/Him
Expert player (3274)
Joined: 5/25/2007
Posts: 399
Location: New England
All the politics aside, I'm happy to see this run published, and look forward to seeing it improved. I also support the idea of generally not allowing a known improvement to bar publication. As a player, most of my runs have 2 loosely defined phases; a research phase where I'm checking out strats and searching for improvements, and an execution phase where I'm actually recording. During the execution phase, it's fairly common that I find some small improvements that affect earlier work. When deciding to go back and revise, pragmatic considerations arise: how big is the improvement? is it visually obvious or even detectable? how much time will it take to redo? is this something that will make my run vulnerable to obsoletion very quickly, with minimal effort? Usually, I do end up re-doing the earlier portions, but I would never want to be required to. At a certain point, I think it's totally legit to flag the improvement for use by future TAS'ers and call it a day. This is especially true with improvements that aren't known to the author until after submission. After all, there's nothing better to entice someone into doing a run than having a known improvement to start with, which practically guarantees publication. And enticing people into doing runs (especially on new platforms and games!) is, I think, what will keep this site going in the long term.
adelikat
He/Him
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3598)
Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
Well said. The other thing I don't like about rejecting for those kinds of improvements is that it kind of discourages openness about improvements. Like if you know you didn't use a new trick early in the game, do you hide it in fear of rejection? I don't see how that helps the community at all.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Joined: 7/24/2008
Posts: 9
As someone who mainly just watches the videos and sometimes looks at the forum for extra discussion, I kind of agree that as long as it improved upon the previous runs and is faster than the best human run, it should get published. It's a given that these things will get improved time and time again, so keeping the improvement/publication process open results in the most entertainment for the viewers coming to the site. As long as people give proper credit in the runs, there shouldn't be any drama over who gets to be "the name" behind the TAS.
Player (120)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
IST wrote:
adelikat wrote:
If you think I am setting the precedent to publish movies that have known improvement then you would be....right. I don't know if you noticed but things have gotten more lax on TASvideos regarding that.
... Well, that says it all, really. The site has begun a slow decline. Wonderful.
I will go ahead and say that when I read Mr. Delikat's statement I had the completely opposite reaction. Hurrah for being more open to entertaining content!
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
IST
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 103
alden wrote:
IST wrote:
adelikat wrote:
If you think I am setting the precedent to publish movies that have known improvement then you would be....right. I don't know if you noticed but things have gotten more lax on TASvideos regarding that.
... Well, that says it all, really. The site has begun a slow decline. Wonderful.
I will go ahead and say that when I read Mr. Delikat's statement I had the completely opposite reaction. Hurrah for being more open to entertaining content!
The various rejections of entertaining games in the past have mostly been due to bias against the game/genre. I don't think that will change. =/ It'd be nice, but...
Joined: 3/25/2008
Posts: 64
adelikat wrote:
Well said. The other thing I don't like about rejecting for those kinds of improvements is that it kind of discourages openness about improvements. Like if you know you didn't use a new trick early in the game, do you hide it in fear of rejection? I don't see how that helps the community at all.
I really don't see this at all. Accepting easily flawed runs like this sets a low standard and basically means the next run for this game is guaranteed to be accepted. And I would say hiding this run (not posting any WIPs that I am aware of) is far worse than hiding a flawed run in fears of rejection, because in this case it seems you were in fear of improvements. TASing is like a science, authors should be striving for 100% optimization and be honored when proven wrong. To summarize: This run was not entertaining and quite boring (although I mainly blame the game for this) It suffers some basic and amateurish flaws. And it has been rushed to publication for ulterior motives.
.II
Player (120)
Joined: 2/11/2007
Posts: 1522
That screenshot is terrible. (Not that I have any better suggestions.)
I make a comic with no image files and you should read it. While there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. -Eugene Debs
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
Ignoring rest of thread. Thoughts: - Wow, published only a few days after submission. Bonus points since it's still a badly-emulated game. Double bonus points since it's a new console. Triple score for another reason. - Overworld = zzzzzzzz - This game was boring to play and even worse to watch. The fact it went out of its way to be incredibly bland (getting 100 or close on each flagpole, shell-riding the whole way though all the levels, etc) and took every possible warp was even more uninteresting. - Worst final boss ever. There's just no other way to put it. Final thoughts: - This movie sucks. The emulation is still far from perfect, the game is bad for speedrunning, and aside from the novelty of being the first DS TAS, it is almost entirely unremarkable. 2.5/2.5. The entertainment vote only went up because I managed to watch the whole thing, though that could be considered as part of the novelty.
Perma-banned
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
Warp wrote:
AngerFist wrote:
Look, if you really want to be picky about it, so far, 56% of the votes are yes = majority of the viewers liked it.
How many rejected submission have had a minority of yes votes?
List of all rejected submissions, ordered by votes in ascending order (0-vote submissions omitted). Seeing this list is kind of distressing.
Perma-banned
Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960
Does that discount the runs where the author decided to cancel the submission for whatever reason?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
Derakon wrote:
Does that discount the runs where the author decided to cancel the submission for whatever reason?
Those are shown as "decision: cancelled" on the site and are not included in this list.
Perma-banned
Skilled player (1404)
Joined: 10/27/2004
Posts: 1977
Location: Making an escape
There also seems to be a good number of "Rejected because an improvement was submitted before publication," type rejections.
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
Skilled player (1402)
Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821
Ferret Warlord wrote:
There also seems to be a good number of "Rejected because an improvement was submitted before publication," type rejections.
Yeah, and also some April fools submissions, that only got yes votes since it was the first of April.
Banned User, Former player
Joined: 12/23/2004
Posts: 1850
Baxter wrote:
Ferret Warlord wrote:
There also seems to be a good number of "Rejected because an improvement was submitted before publication," type rejections.
Yeah, and also some April fools submissions, that only got yes votes since it was the first of April.
Yes. Generally when I refer to "rejected movies I would have published", I mean things like Catrap. Serious submission, but relatively unknown game. I was originally going to remove the pre-publication obsoletion and joke submissions, but the amount of work required made it not worth bothering.
Perma-banned
Joined: 7/28/2005
Posts: 339
Xkeeper wrote:
Warp wrote:
AngerFist wrote:
Look, if you really want to be picky about it, so far, 56% of the votes are yes = majority of the viewers liked it.
How many rejected submission have had a minority of yes votes?
List of all rejected submissions, ordered by votes in ascending order (0-vote submissions omitted). Seeing this list is kind of distressing.
The comment for "Madou Monogatari I" in particular bugged me. It sounds like someone saying "well, the majority overwhelmingly believes that this should be done, but I don't, so, too bad!"
IST
Joined: 8/26/2008
Posts: 103
Hence what I said about bias against certain games/types of games. It'd be nice if the changes to the site would fix that. But they won't.
Joined: 3/7/2006
Posts: 720
Location: UK
Fuck off, IST. Also, I think adelikat is currently working on an improvement. Best of both worlds etc. Also someone publish the goddamn Chrono Trigger submission.
Voted NO for NO reason
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