How do the people here feel about having more TA movies that play through the game in mostly the same way a normal person would, without using ridiculous strategies that the average player can't hope to master, and simply playing "normally" with frame precision. How the game was meant to be played, but perfectly. I can see there's some interest, as the BLJless run of Super Mario 64 is receiving some attention, but I'm trying to gauge the interest.
The reason I'm asking is because I'm thinking of starting a Let's Play for no particular reason. However, to avoid the waste of time that is recording repeated deaths and such, I was thinking of TAing it. This site, of course, doesn't have to host the video if it's not up to your standards, and I'm gonna do it anyway, but if TASvideos would be interested in hosting the movie file and such (sans talking over it, obviously), I could kill two birds with one stone.
The game in question is Tonic Trouble, which doesn't have a movie yet. I purposely picked a game that was not very prolific both so that there was a point in Let's Playing it at all, and because there was a chance TASvideos would pick it up.
So, to summarize my point here, if I made a tool-assisted movie that went out of its way to play the game "normally" but with frame precision, is there any chance of it being published as a TAS? No massive, gamebreaking glitches. Just a really good run of the game as it was "meant" to be played.
There was thread or a post talking about longplay and TAS, but I can't find it.
Anyway, the main problem is that the TASvideos publications are all about superplay and put some "normalplay" next to it, would sadly just look wrong.
Thought, if there could be a place where we could gather all longplay input file, this would certainly help the speedrunner to don't have to start completly from scratch when picking a new game.
Sometime, it's true that starting completly from scratch is going ask a first playthought and this should help the taser to become more familiar with the game... but for the obscure 3D game and the long RPG, it's just going to be a pain.
Also, been able to loadstate for the later events of the game is alway handy and those are probably helpfull for route planning. So yes, a new system or a place for stroring tool assisted playthought/longplay would be nice... but I won't recommend to encode them.
If you so like, go ahead and create your site and publish movies with this ambition of yours!
There can be more tool-assisted to the world than just TASVideos.
If you so like, go ahead and create your site and publish movies with this ambition of yours!
There can be more tool-assisted to the world than just TASVideos.
Came here to say this. This idea isn't a bad one, it just isn't really what TASVideos is about. I mean, the tagline is "When human skills are just not enough"; not "When human skills are just about right"
Sorry, I had to make that joke.
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I suggested a new category "uses the route intended by the game developers" in that thread linked by arkiandruski, and I have suggested it earlier as well. See the details in that thread in my first post there.
I still think that category could have merit at least with some runs. It would satisfy those who want to see a more "normal" playthrough of the game, which is still done flawlessly and with superhuman perfection.
For some reason the suggestion has never got much popularity, though. I really can't understand why.
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Warp wrote:
. It would satisfy those who want to see a more "normal" playthrough of the game, which is still done flawlessly and with superhuman perfection.
For some reason the suggestion has never got much popularity, though. I really can't understand why.
Probably for the same reason that people go to the movies to see action films, instead of clamoring to see a movie about sitting in a cubicle for 8 hours with the occasional coffee break: They already know what it looks like because they can do it themselves. Using tools to create a non-super play is fine, but they don't really fit the mold here (our motto isn't "Using tools to play through games just like you can!")
In my opinnion, such a thing just falls within the gap between non-assisted runs and TASes. They have no point, because they lack both the appeal of non-assisted runs (as fast as a human can do it) and TASes (as fast as the game allows).
Perhaps "Tool Assisted Walkthrough" may be a better category for such runs, but this is certainly not what belongs on this site.
You misunderstand.
The idea with "uses the route intended by the game developers" is not "tool-assistance is used, but the playing is done like a human would".
It's still "super-play". The run can be flawless and frame-perfect, enemies can be shot with perfect accuracy or avoided by the closest sub-pixel approach possible, ladders can be caught as early as possible, luck can be manipulated for optimal item drops, and so on. The only restriction is that no shortcuts are used which the game developers didn't intend to be used (ie. by abusing a bug, glitch or level design oversight).
This is not so much different than eg. a 100% completion run. Such a run doesn't become less of a "super-play" just because it collects all coins: It's simply uses an alternative goal for entertainment purposes, but still achieves that goal as fast and perfectly as possible.
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There might be a 'market' for non-superplay movies that utilize rerecords. Something along the lines of longplays.net but without the "long" that makes them sometimes hard to sit through. Webnations had suggested creating such a site.
However, that kind of thing would be beyond the scope of what TASVideos offers. Like others have said, our niche is that of superplays not just the act of using rerecords.
Your points are valid for your argument, but I don't think that was the original intent of this thread.
I wasn't really endorsing the idea in the original post per se (an idea which seems quite vague... something like "play normally, except that tool-assistance is used to avoid death"). I simply took the opportunity to remind people of this suggestion which is similar and which many people who want "more normal" playthgoughs could perhaps like.
A "just normal human play, but death is avoided using savestates" would usually be rather boring, if not even exasperating to watch. However, I do believe that "as fast as superhumanly possible, but using the route intended by the developers" could be more interesting, at least with some games.
I think there's value in the OP's suggestion. I've occasionally watched LPs of various games, and it's much less entertaining to watch one where the player is bad at the game than one in which the player is good at the game (unless of course the purpose of the LP is to mock the player's skill). But if you don't have the skill to play a game well, savestates would help smooth things out, effectively bumping you up a few tiers in "apparent skill" without taking it to extremes.
That said, I doubt you could convince this community to publish such movies on this site. Your best bet for a repository would probably be to make your own site.
Speaking of which, is the TASVideos site backend open-source?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
I could have sworn I'd already replied to this thread.
Thanks for all the feedback. I'm sorry to hear an "intended route" run isn't in line with TAS standards, but not surprised. I'll keep my longplays out of the site's hair. If a splinter community with such a goal comes along, send me a PM or something. I'd love to see it happen.
