Post by mz

Posted: 10/12/2010 6:57 AM
(Edited: 10/15/2010 9:21 PM)

Post subject: Dream Team Contest #3

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DarkKobold

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See for up-to-date info. Judge & Game/Platform decider: Truncated Signed Up: DarkKobold adelikat Atma boct1584 FatRatKnight MUGG Tentative: Mitjitsu mz Sonikkustar Tompa Cardboard Tentative is a list for people who put caveats in their post. OLD POST: I'd rather participate than run the contest... however, we should get this started for 2010. I'd also rather see the competition go closer to a month, than a week, as most people have real lives, commitments, and we may see less drop-outs if people are given a chance to you know, balance it the real world. All-nighters shouldn't happen for a TAS. I'm going to try and condense the 4 pages of discussion from last years contest into one post. On Game selection From Moozooh:

Good genres are platformers, adventures, and bomberman-style action/puzzle games.
It must not contain excessive luck manipulation.
It must not be "hold right to win" simple.
It must not be too complex.
It must be relatively short (definitely below 15 minutes for estimated completion time), but not too short.
It must not contain emulation errors or require using a feature-incomplete or notoriously problematic emulator (PCSX, Mupen, FBA).

I disagree with the excessive luck manipulation... but of course I would. From Andymac:

Must be emulated correctly and playable by all team members, for obvious reasons. This rules out any PSX game because good iso's are hard to come by and are extremely large downloads. I'm okay with games on other emulators as long as the rom is not excessively large and the emulator is stable for all
It must be short. It must be under 20 mins depending on the complexity of the game. The game should be able to be completed in one week by three team members whithin reasonable expectations.
The game must be suitable for a TAS. Bad game choices like autoscrollers and generally crap games won't be accepted by the site, and they won't get accepted by me.
The game should not have a run on TASvideos and if you are participating, don't tell me that you have tased this game before. I want everyone with an equal footing as soon as the competition starts. Also, I don't want to hear about well known games without a run. I'm looking for hidden gems, not obvious choices.
The game should be awesome. I'm going to watch all of the submitted movies and I don't want it to be a waste of my time.

Truncated's Comments for future competitions: - Set the starting date in stone well before the competition starts. For me it was a problem that this started two days late. I had more time last weekend than this one (which I knew beforehand). - If I do this again, I will form my own team. There could still be a pool of people who are randomly grouped into teams, of course. - Don't announce game info in the topic after the competition has started. Baxter Suggests: I think it's more important, like Truncated pointed out, that it's possible to enter as a team. Of course, people could also enter individually... and those would be grouped together like previously. Edit: I also think it's important the date is set long beforehand, so people know if they have time then or not. It might also be a good idea to announce the console the game is for, and maybe even the genre of the game beforehand... to avoid people dropping out for those reasons. FODA's advice for teams: Someone on IRC was curious when I said before the game was revealed that we were already doing stuff. It was several things: - deciding who could do what at first (find ram addresses, do a testrun, find bugs) - we were planning what to do with the movie files based on our time zones. - we set up a private IRC channel with some rules. - and we set up the spreadsheets to organize the information for ourselves (with some working formulas to compare movie times thanks to truncated). Who wants to take the reigns? How many teams should be allowed? How long should the contest run? When should the contest start? [/thread][/url]

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 10/12/2010 8:08 AM

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Mitjitsu

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I wouldn't mind giving this a go so long as it's on GENS, FCEUX or VBA. Menace Beach anyone?

Posted: 10/12/2010 12:15 PM

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MUGG

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Sure, as long as it's not genesis.

Youtube • Livestream • Progress 11th TASer of the Decade 2010-2019 !

Posted: 10/12/2010 2:18 PM

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Derakon

Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960

Andymac might still have a list of game candidates from last time. IIRC he wanted to keep the actual game being run a secret until the competition actually started to keep players from getting a head-start.

Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.

Posted: 10/12/2010 3:26 PM

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adelikat

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First of all, the other 2 dream team contests happened at very busy times in my life. I wanted to participate in something like that but couldn't devote time those weeks. Now is a great time for me, and I would like to enter the contest. As far as ground rules, I'd like to make some points: One month is better than two weeks, you don't HAVE to use the whole month, if you just want to do two weeks go for it. The point of one month is that most tasers are going to spend two weeks over the course of that month due to real life. It isn't like someones going to get two more weeks than you of sitting in their room all day TASing. The platform of choice should be PCE, no questions about it. Everybody is going to enter this contest with an unfair advantage at one of the "common" platforms. Most of us know little about PCE and so we would be on equal footing. And PCE has a lot of nice publish worthy games. In addition, PCEjin is an accurate emulator that has a nice implementation of all the standard TAS tools we want. Everybody is demanding certain platforms or not other platforms. This is more reason we should use PCE. The whole point of this would be to get out of your comfort zone and try something new! If you can do that, this isn't an ideal contest for you anyway. I agree that no contest member should know the game choice until it starts. And even better if the audience doesn't know until the contest is over :) I asked moozooh to try to pick a PCE game. I can't think of someone more suited for the task of deciding the game. He's got a good mix of objectivity & TAS skills. I don't know if he will do it, but one can hope. I also think that anybody who does this be willing to have a strong IRC presence at least for the duration of the contest. Seriously, it is a huge disadvantage TASing with a partner who doesn't IRC. And one more thing, the game should not have have the ability to use more than 2 players. Even a 2 player TAS might turn off some TASers, but at least it can be well done without the use of special tools.

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Posted: 10/12/2010 4:41 PM

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mz

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Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 693

I don't think pcejin is a good choice: it doesn't seem to have a debugger and some other tools that can be found in the other systems...

adelikat wrote:

I also think that anybody who does this be willing to have a strong IRC presence at least for the duration of the contest. Seriously, it is a huge disadvantage TASing with a partner who doesn't IRC.

Agreed, this is very important. But the most important thing for me is to have a game that has a lot of room for creativity: many different weapons and non-linear levels with much room for luck manipulation. This ensures that no movie will be very similar to another, and that those people who don't have as much time as others, to optimize the TAS, still will have an important chance of winning.

You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.

Posted: 10/12/2010 4:55 PM

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DarkKobold

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Joined: 11/15/2004
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I figure the best way to make choices is have votes. I think, regardless of contest length, the contest should start on a Friday and end on a Monday, as weekends are, generally speaking, everyone's most available times. So, I put a poll up. Please only vote if you are planning to participate. Also, if you want any other poll options, let me know. We can run this for a few days, then move to the next question.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 10/12/2010 5:00 PM

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adelikat

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A debugger is the ONLY tool PCEjin lacks. And honestly I think that's more depth than anybody needs to be going on a contest of this nature anyway. It has a nice lua implementation, RAM Search, and Ram Watch, that's the bulk of what you need.

It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects

Posted: 10/12/2010 5:14 PM

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mz

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Joined: 10/26/2007
Posts: 693

adelikat wrote:

A debugger is the ONLY tool PCEjin lacks. And honestly I think that's more depth than anybody needs to be going on a contest of this nature anyway.

I can tell you all the tools we needed for the last contest that pcejin lacks: - Game Genie / Patch codes - Debugger - Tracer and "Hook RAM" option - "Lock palette" option - Layers toggle I don't think a debugger is "more depth than anybody needs". One of the reasons why Team 3 won last year was because of luck manipulation: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=214165#214165 (Level 3) and a debugger makes that work all much easier...

You're just fucking stupid, everyone hates you, sorry to tell you the truth. no one likes you, you're someone pretentious and TASes only to be on speed game, but don't have any hope, you won't get there.

Posted: 10/12/2010 5:37 PM

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DarkKobold

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Joined: 11/15/2004
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Uh, before we beat up on each other, I think its important to note that no one has stepped up to run the contest. Whoever that person is will get the final say in platform and game choice; not the people participating in the contest.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 10/12/2010 6:57 PM

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klmz

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What will happen if someone not participating in the contest submit a run of the chosen game onto the workbench while the contest is going on?

<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days <adelikat> no doubt <adelikat> klmz, they still do

Posted: 10/12/2010 7:02 PM

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Atma

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klmz wrote:

What will happen if someone not participating in the contest submit a run of the chosen game onto the workbench while the contest is going on?

"Well shit. ok guys, we'll select a different game and restart the timer."? The track record for a dream team contest game to be submitted prior to the completetion of the contest is non-existant, and the last dream team contest game still doesn't have a submitted run on the site. I'd say the likelyhood is pretty low. Either way, I express my interest in participating this time around.

Posted: 10/12/2010 9:02 PM
(Edited: 10/12/2010 9:49 PM)

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Sonikkustar

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Joined: 9/7/2007
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Sure! I like working in teams. So im in as long as the game isnt blatantly hard to do.

adelikat wrote:

The platform of choice should be PCE, no questions about it.

PCE You say? ;)

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Posted: 10/12/2010 9:22 PM

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Truncated

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Joined: 4/17/2004
Posts: 3107
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I am also interested in participating in this. But, since I am still working on that last dream team contest movie Atma mentioned, I'm thinking maybe I should run the competition instead. That is, unless someone else really wants to do it or people somehow find me unfit for running it.

Posted: 10/12/2010 9:25 PM

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Brushy

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Joined: 11/13/2005
Posts: 1587

Truncated wrote:

I am also interested in participating in this. But, since I am still working on that last dream team contest movie Atma mentioned, I'm thinking maybe I should run the competition instead. That is, unless someone else really wants to do it or people somehow find me unfit for running it.

I can watch Truncated run this competition. I hope that helps.

Posted: 10/12/2010 10:10 PM

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adelikat

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Truncated wrote:

That is, unless someone else really wants to do it or people somehow find me unfit for running it.

Yes, please do :)

It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects

Posted: 10/12/2010 11:27 PM

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BigBoct

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What would running the contest entail, exactly? Depending how involved (or not) it is, I might be willing to give it a shot if Truncated doing it falls through. EDIT: I'm equally interested in participating as well, should I not be needed for running it.

Previous Name: boct1584

Posted: 10/13/2010 8:47 AM

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Mitjitsu

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adelikat wrote:

The platform of choice should be PCE, no questions about it. Everybody is going to enter this contest with an unfair advantage at one of the "common" platforms.

everybody is demanding certain platforms or not other platforms.

So are you :P Obviously the emu must be stable and accessible for nearly everyone, but Snes9x is only emu I'd refuse to do a TAS on. Genesis has many hidden gems if people were prepared to search more deeply and NES almost certainly has games that haven't been done yet.

I agree that no contest member should know the game choice until it starts.

That I won't agree to. If I feel the game sucks too much and is unenjoyable then I certainly wouldn't want to do it. Aside I don't think there is harm in having a playaround in real time to aprove of the game beforehand.

And even better if the audience doesn't know until the contest is over :)

Would be ideal but since much of the communication will done over IRC, keeping the game under raps of all the gossip will be near impossible.

Posted: 10/14/2010 6:49 PM

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DarkKobold

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It looks like it will be 3 weeks, 4 weekends. I will leave the poll up until Saturday, so we can move to the next poll. Next poll will be to determine if people want random teams or non-random sign up teams, as well as two teams only, or limited size (3-4) multiple teams. I'll make a 4 poll option, so we can get them done asap. I will try and keep the first post up-to-date with sign-ups, and final polling decisions. I don't mean to step on Truncated's toes, I just want to keep things moving.

Sage advice from a friend of Jim: So put your tinfoil hat back in the closet, open your eyes to the truth, and realize that the government is in fact causing austismal cancer with it's 9/11 fluoride vaccinations of your water supply.

Posted: 10/14/2010 6:59 PM

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FatRatKnight

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After a revelation and/or epiphany, I would like to sign up. I have something to do, but this might be a good distraction. I generally don't like to put myself into using other emulators I'm unfamiliar with, but this gives me a perfect excuse to actually use it instead of staying away from it. (Those I used are FCEUX, Snes9x, VBA, and DeSmuME. Perhaps I will add one more to this list as contest stuff gets decided.)

Posted: 10/15/2010 9:21 PM

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Sonikkustar

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Put me up in "signed up"! I think that this will be a fun one, as long as it isnt on PCE.

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