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There's one more requirement:
The only kind of input this custom movie format supports should be the input that the game directly supports and provides to the player. What regular player can not do, should not be possible in the input format either.
For example, in some games, movie format may allow to set character coordinates or velocity directly, without having to hit input keys to get there gradually. We don't want to allow that. TAS environment should be as close as possible to running the game in an emulator of whatever device it runs on.
Scepheo wrote:
feos wrote:
Elaborate on the differences between these 2, and on (again) how emulating Doom altogether is better than making an internal movie for it (have fun expanding that principle to Hourglass too).
As you yourself said; maintaining a strict policy for which game engine movies we accept is impossible, and this will eventually go wrong. This is the first reason I'm against it. The second reason is that game engine replays aren't the same thing as TASes. In the case of Half Life 2, replay files contain actor positions rather than input, which means that completely impossible movements (like going through walls) is possible by hex editing these. In the case of Doom, it is impossible to control the menu, while this is very much part of the game. If a menu related glitch was found, a TAS would be allowed to (and in fact should) exploit: something that wouldn't be possible with demo files.
Should internal dumping be a requirement?
Lack of it uses to lead to complicated setups that are not always consistent. I had to dump my latest DOOM publication on several versions of kkapture and PrBoom, with all sorts of config tweaks, to figure out why something mysteriously breaks in every scenario I try. Not only this makes it hard to learn for regular encoders/publishers (we don't want to depend on having PhD people on staff), it also makes encoders hate the complicated setup, dream of getting rid of it, and try to dodge having to deal with it. This is why we dropped support for mupen64 and pcsx. Their encoding was absolute nightmare.
Should compatibility with a lossless capture program like KKapture be required?
kkapture can do lossy encoding too, but overall, if there's no way to record AV internally, kkapture has to be supported since it captures AV on API level, which is more stable and leads to less possibility of info loss. Other tools are usually much worse at this. And as I said, kkapture may also be a hell to handle.
Or are we open to recording lossily?
It looks terrible at low resolutions. And even more terrible after you upscale that for youtube.
How deterministic do we want it to be at minimum? Would it be acceptable if you need a specific video card sometimes like dolphin?
Poor determinism leads to another level of nightmares and blackouts, for tasers, judges, and publishers. If we don't have anyone available with the magic PC spec, the movie will end up forever in the queue or rejected anyway. We don't want TASing to depend on real world luck.
Overall here's the list of dumping needs that I compiled after having dealt with all sorts of complicated encoding setups at tasvideos: http://tasvideos.org/LawsOfTAS/OnVideoDumping.html The farther a potential new emulator or framework is from those, the less I will want to have it accepted. We also have 2 worthwhile pages by the previous senior publisher: http://tasvideos.org/Natt/SyncHallOfShame.html and http://tasvideos.org/Natt/CaptureHallOfShame.html
Agreed on all the rest.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Kill screens, assuming they are impossible to complete under any circumstances
To match the point above, it needs to say "a killscreen".
For games that have "infinite" levels, including a looping set of stages, you may end after all unique content (enemies, level layouts, game mechanics, etc.) is exhausted.
As an extension of this, one is also allowed to play until difficulty stops increasing.
Regional differences such as text and cutscene length are completely discounted when considering improvements. Only actual gameplay is considered to be an improvement. If your movie has 600 fewer frames solely due to version differences, your total improvement must be more than 600 frames.
I feel this should be a new paragraph.
Individual game modes (level sets, episodes), including those unlocked using passwords, are also acceptable as separate branches.
Missing stuff:
The triviality clause! While there are some plans regarding it, we're gonna need it for rules that would boil down to it to get dropped.Unofficial games. Bootlegs, homebrews, prototypes, etc. While I don't feel very strong about limiting them the way the current rules do, there should still be some discussion on what to do with them in the end. I don't even ask to copy the current rules over, just some general info that makes sense to you.
Regarding converted ROMs, I'm not sure. We don't want to depend on 3rd party converters unless we can host them. There's also Thread #21609: #6624: Chamale's Wii MLB Power Pros 2008 "Success mode" in 21:34.17. But things that work on actual device would be fine most of the time.
Image integrity. Some games glitch out if you replace the disk with something else. While great for crazy showcase, That would need a special place to be designed to host such things (also planned).
As for that one game that asks you to insert arbitrary images, I feel it would be fair to allow inserting official games for the same system to make it easier for the player. But I'm not sure where this clause should be placed.
What do we do with Standard regulations?
We'll be revising score attack rules very soon, but for now it should be good to mention that infinite loop techniques are not allowed (ones that delay completion indefinitely to score more points).Arcade continues are an infinite source of lives, and they make the game easier. We'll see what to do with them later, should be safe to append to the cheats clause for now.Obsoletion chapter is incredibly wordy right now, but we need at least some basic info about it mentioned somewhere.
Rules for systems: Should we have a subpages under MovieRules for each system?
Movie formats: Looks like it needs to be an automatic thing, also not sure where.
I've been thinking the entire day about consolidating regulations about TAS environments. There's a ton of info all around the current rules, and also some info in various places of the draft.
We explicitly allow running a game in any config variant of the official and intended environment, unless it causes bugs that hinder gameplay, visuals, or audio. Important term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_architecture
For consoles and other devices with closed architecture, we don't allow deviations from official and intended environment. If it's a game released for PAL PlayStation, we run it in emulated PAL PlayStation, with all authentic config. But we allow better GBx modes unless it causes problems.
For open architecture, we're more open too. Emulating officially supported environment is also allowed of course. And deviations may be allowed depending on their effect on gameplay: improving framerate or audio-visuals is a good thing. Running incompatible hardware is not.
This would automatically resolve most of libTAS rules too.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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When you upload a reencode of an obsoleted movie to TASVideosChannel, disable subscriber notifications.
When you're at Video details, scroll down and click SHOW MORE. Below Licence you will see a checkbox saying Publish to subscriptions feed and notify subscribers. Uncheck it! This way after the video is added to the publication and becomes public automatically, it won't flood the feed of TVC subscribers.
Waiting for 2 hours for such an upload is not needed when making it public.
After publishing a movie, the timeout is still 4 hours, and after making a regular reencode public, it's 2 hours.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Done.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
What encoding specifications are best for .mp4 files?
For your original mp4 to work in the online player we currently require the file to have:
audio: aac
video: h.264
moov atom: front
pixel format: yuv420p
If this is not the case we will derive a new mp4 with the file name suffix .ia.mp4
Too bad Archive can't stream 4:2:2 video. That would fit Rec601 so nicely and also look great at 2x, but nope.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Use an official release of an approved emulator. Use interimdevelopment builds at your own risk.
I agree with ThunderAxe31. Or maybe we can drop the second sentence altogether in the summary?
You may not change emulator settings to gain in-game speed advantages, such as running 50hz PAL games in 60hz NTSC mode.
I'm bad at english, but we need to mention that we don't want settings that are inaccurate to the actual emulated device. If some setting gives speed advantage and is present on the real device, it's fine to use it (generally).
Any release version or patch of a game may be used, though you should be able to explain why you chose that version.
Could the patch be confused with ROM/image modifications also called patches?
- Always record new movies from power-on. Starting from a savestate is not allowed.
- SRAM-anchored movies are allowed, but they require a verification movie that creates the necessary SRAM. This verification movie does not need to be optimized.
We might need users to know the difference between emulator savestates and in-game saves. The latter can be SRAM-based, but SRAM may have other meanings too. In branches and tags we call those just saves (save glitch, save corruption). Again not sure how to word this well.
Cheat codes and passwords are only allowed to access harder difficulties and/or bonus content.
ROM or RAM modification, such as Game Genie and Action Replay, is not allowed.
Game Genie modifies the ROM.
Your movie file must sync from beginning to end for multiple people. If any extra steps or settings are required for sync, they must all be stated in your submission text.
Every movie will indeed be replayed by several people, but the wording implies it has to be sent to other people for sync verification before submitting. While this would actually be a great practice, I dunno how to word this softer.
- Do not submit other authors' movies without their explicit permission.
- Do not plagiarize. This is grounds for an immediate site ban.
Don't these 2 mean the same thing?
Any%: Completing a game in the fastest time possible.
We use the term fastest completion officially instead of any%, because the former is more descriptive.
-- If the fastest time for a game is an ACE run, we also allow a separate any% branch that foregoes it.
Wasn't ACE confused with major skip glitch here?
The definition of a major skip varies from game to game, but is generally defined as an unintended skip of otherwise unavoidable content.
Would gameplay sound better here?
This is not strictly "100%": Categories such as "all levels", "best ending" and "maximum score" are also acceptable forms of full completion if the game has no other definition.
I think we want to say it's not always literally "100%". Not strictly "100%" looks to me like sometimes we're fine with just reaching 99% out of 100%. As always, I'm bad at english.
Individual game modes or level sets, including those unlocked using passwords, are also acceptable as separate branches.
As a general rule, your chosen game should have optimizable gameplay and an ending.
An ending in the game is not a requirement. If there's none, we define it ourselves.
Moons is a class that holds a variety of goals curated by the TASvideos community. Game and goal choice does not matter as much here, as long as it is widely approved by the community. It is recommended you ask for feedback in advance before starting a Moons-oriented run.
To reflect the current system, we need to mention entertainment. Long-term too, goals that can not possibly go to Standard will have to be entertaining, like playarounds.
Gameplay must be accurate to console
We emulate computers too.
Your submission must be reproducible. That is, multiple people must verifywill be verifying that your input file syncs on an officially released build of an accepted emulator. Use development/interim builds at your own risk, as input files created on them may not sync even on the next official release. Anything that could affect sync, such as emulator settings or config options, must be stated in the submission text so that Judges and Publishers have the best chance of verifying your submission. If a game is not emulated well at all, it may not be accepted until the accuracy improves, as emulation bugs could provide unintentional advantages to a TAS or ruin the overall experience (?).
Note: Dolphin's Beta and Development builds are considered official releases, and they are preferred to stable releases.
I think sync requirements should be a separate section. I don't think they are a part of console accuracy.
Also I wouldn't say Dolphin interims are preferred. They may still be non-trivial to get a video from, and there are versions to avoid completely. Stables are the safest, and for the rest we need to link this thread probably.
Outside modification of a game or a system BIOS is not allowed: This includes Game Genie and Action Replay cheats as well as direct modification of game files, such as on a PC or Linux game.
If it's the only way to make the game work for a TAS, and it doesn't alter gameplay, modification is allowed (still safer to ask judges).
Use the correct version of a game
I suggest turning this section into regular text with examples as bullet points. Making it a nested list feels like it's just to large to grasp. After all, the points are rather independent.
Virtual Console (VC) and other ROMs extracted from official emulators are allowed, though the original release ROM is usually preferred. VC is preferred if it is the only official English release of a game, or if it provides unique features not in the original release, such as different gameplay or new game modes.
This should mention that the extracted game should actually be fully playable, without audio/visual bugs and bugs that hinder gameplay. This is important because some VC games heavily depend on their VC environment and don't function properly without it. Playing them as VC games without extraction should always be allowed imo.
SRAM-anchored movies require a verification file, which must be provided in the submission.
- This verification file should create the exact SRAM state that's used in the submission. It does not have to be optimized or even TASed at all, the only purpose it serves is to verify that your submission starts from a legitimate state.
Should we note that the initial verification movie should still start from power-on? Also the wording should involve in-game saves to be more generic.
- For games that loop a set of levels endlessly, the final level before the game loops must be completed at minimum. If difficulty continues to increase on successive loops, you have the option of continuing until the difficulty stops increasing. Continuing is preferred, but not required.
- For games with "infinite" levels, you may end after all unique content (enemies, level layouts, game mechanics, etc.) is exhausted.
The current rules don't allow to stop at the end of the first loop if there's still unique content after it.
Unnecessary input should be trimmed to the last input required to reach your chosen endpoint.
Somewhere we should mention that TAS timing starts from console power-on and ends on last required input.
For games with post-credits input or high score screens, you are not required to include those inputs in your input file. You may provide a separate file with these inputs for the purposes of our publication encodes.
It's preferred to have this extra input in the main file.
If you're aiming for speed, your submission must beat, or at least match, all known records.
The movie must be properly attributed
Mention that all files submitted to the site are distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 license.
I'll go through omitted sections in another post.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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When I try to open the new torrent files it says invalid torrent file for some reason. How did you create them?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Samsara wrote:
Any release version is allowed, the only requirements are that the author explains why that version was chosen, and that we are actually able to access that version in order to verify it.
Agreed.
Samsara wrote:
Currently there's no official stance except for "no DRM is preferred but not required". We've accepted Steam TASes already at least.
We had a thread discussing some aspects of DRM. Since we don't want sync to depend on outside world, on unemulated reality, on internet connection, and on availability of online services, we don't want to allow games with DRM that require any of that. If DRM dependency can be resolved by simulating it via API hooks, that's fine, if it's possible. Steam games I've seen submitted so far may depend on Steam API simulation, but overall they seemed to work fine in offline mode.
Samsara wrote:
My gut feeling here is that we should be able to accept them in their current forms, assuming they're "finished" enough to be able to reach an ending of some sort. Early access would definitely be obsoleted by full releases, and episodic games would vary depending on how they're presented: If all episodes are eventually released in a single game, we may prefer all episodes in one file, but if each episode is its own separate game, we'll have to take each episode individually.
Agreed.
ikuyo wrote:
For games with variable graphical settings that can affect performance (such as RE games or the Towerfall 1000fps movie), is there a preferred setting? Is it explicitly the responsibility of the runner to state the environment? (environment rules such as fps are set in libTAS atm, but it's not a bad idea to futureproof)
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Added!
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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This is good now.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Do you know what the manual-only rerecord count is, even approximately?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I think mmarks solved it by hitting that button after the movie ends. If that doesn't help, then it's fine to use the encode you have.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Looks like the published movie is a bit incomplete then, since it doesn't trigger the credits by itself. Maybe if you hit some button they appear?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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If there's no manual TASing in this movie, we will have to nuke the rerecord count. We do that for botted rerecords so it doesn't mess with statistics on manual ones on the site.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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SGB decoration also counts as non-gameplay area similar to overscan, so subtitles need to be moved to in-game area.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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In the current encode there are credits at the end as well. Do they appear automatically after some wait?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Yeah I wonder if it's possible to create and host a generic GM runner that would work for all such games with minimal tweaks.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
How was your entertainment tonight? Did you enjoy it? Actually, there is more than one ending for each story. You, my guests, have only experienced a mere fraction. We look forward to seeing you again.
This has some similarities with #6933: DaSmileKat's NES Extra Mario Bros. "bad ending" in 05:24.35. The game is telling you you have more to do, however it's not outright telling you you've failed or it's a false ending. It's also related to [4469] NES Ghosts 'n Goblins by DreamYao in 08:04.45 and its "fake" ending after the first playtrhough. I personally feel this game has enough to offer for a single run-through, and "all endings" will in no way look similar to it. I'm leaning towards allowing this branch, but I don't have strong arguments for it.
I think I have an argument.
Reaching the "tonight's entertainment" speech does mean completing every story once. And getting the "all stories complete" speech means replaying the same stories again and again, hoping to find new story endings. It's not like in other "bad ending" games the game tells you to go back and complete everything once again, but more. In other games you're informed that this ending is improper and you need to use a different route. Then you start from where you last saved or from scratch.
With this game, there's no way not to run into "tonight's entertainment" speech even if you aim for "all stories complete". At some point you will complete every story once without having completed all endings.
You can't even replay the same story to completeness until you've completed them all once. The game is not trying to discourage you from getting the regular "tonight's entertainment" ending, and there's no way to even avoid it! So we can't say it's an improper ending.
Conclusion: this movie will be accepted once routing is final.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I don't know if I'm doing this correctly, but I see that this movie is longer if I only compare gameplay durations, both with and without lag. Per-level differences are all over the place: sometimes much longer, sometimes much shorter.
----------------------------
| | lag | lagless |
----------------------------
| old | 1014230 | 375224 |
| new | 1014714 | 375787 |
| diff | +484 | +563 |
----------------------------
gameplay = false
lastgameplay = false
timer = 0
while true do
local first = memory.readbyte(0x385, "WRAM")
local second = memory.readbyte(0x387, "WRAM")
gameplay = first == 3 and second == 3
if gameplay and not lastgameplay then
timer = 0
elseif gameplay and lastgameplay and not emu.islagged() then
timer = timer + 1
elseif lastgameplay and not gameplay then
print(timer)
end
lastgameplay = gameplay
emu.frameadvance()
end
Figuring out if something is a legitimate improvement or not is not only the judge's job, but also something the author needs to prove. Reapplying the same strats on the old publication is a sensible way to check improvement validity, but not when there's 100 levels and level durations differ in both directions. I can't do this automatically, and I can't do this manually. I can't do this partially either, because improvement is not uniform here: if it makes some levels longer in the old emulator version too, I wouldn't know until I tweak and check them all.
On top of that, more accuracy leading to more lag doesn't automatically mean solutions for less accurate version also make sense for more accurate version even if they take longer. Maybe more accurate version needs different solutions that also save some lag. Maybe those new solutions cause too much lag compared to old solutions.
I'm leaning towards rejecting this movie until times become more comparable. Easiest way out is incorporating those strats into the old movie, checking if they save time in every level they appear in, and submitting that. Until then, it's unclear if the new methods are still more optimal with more accurate emulation.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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As I addressed in my last quote in your post, optimality of this approach is incredibly limited. From all the possible values that the game can parse, we're limited to trying a few random ones until we don't want to try anymore.
On the other hand, this approach is also sometimes used in regular tasing when internals of the game are not known and all you can do is indirect manipulation which can also be limited. I can see the value of allowing both options, so disassembling the code isn't required. And if we want to help the community instead of limiting it, it also looks more user friendly.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
If a game consists of presenting a story with user input having little to no effect on it, it is not acceptable. This includes games which are overwhelmingly made up of cutscenes with very little user interaction anywhere. This also includes visual novels and games of a Choose Your Own Adventure story book variety, where the user has no creative control beyond choosing between predefined choices. Examples include:
Super Adventure Rockman
The Arcade version of Dragon's Lair.
Indeed this game is overwhelmingly made of cutscenes. Once every few minutes (maybe more often) you get to press a button or two, and that affects what the next cutscene will be. You can't speed up the cutscenes. And you can only skip them if you're replaying the same route again after completing the level (story) once. There's a few places where you can move your controlled object in different directions and do a certain action within a given time interval, but those are still limited and rare. If we compare this gameplay to freely running around, picking up items, reading things, like for instance in Silent Hill, it does look like there's little to no room for creative control.
However we also have the triviality clause there.
The gameplay needs to stand out from unassisted play, and must not be seen as trivial. Note that a game is considered trivial until proven otherwise. If getting perfect times everywhere is challenging, such a game is considered acceptable. If a game was considered trivial but a technique is found later that makes TASing it challenging, that game becomes acceptable.
Example of a trivial (mini-)game which does not stand out is Desert Bus
Completing "all endings" (which is a valid in-game goal and gives you the best ending) is absolutely not trivial, because there's a ton of routing options, a ton of endings, and you have to find the optimal path through all of them in one go, considering the skip option as well, and the fact that some endings tweak some routes.
And I dare say that even the goal we have here is also not trivial. There's less routing to resolve, but there's still a lot of options that unlock other options, different endings, and it all needs to be tested. For example I literally found a route that Spike already tested before and it was slower for him, but for me it was faster than the current submission, and I got a different ending too.
So here's the thing I've been thinking of for a good while.
The current wording of the triviality clause, while it's still debatable if we want to keep it in the future at all, seems to cover a whole lot of things that exist as separate rules. For example, we removed the rule about educational games, because it was incredibly hard to figure out, and the goal of that rule was still to avoid triviality. Similarly, I feel we should get rid of the rule about "visual novels and games of a Choose Your Own Adventure story book variety", because we only want to reject those if it's trivial to speedrun them, and we already have a decent rule for that.
Opinions?Spikestuff wrote:
Movie Must Be Complete is the big one I know it's violating/challenging in terms of rulesets
Indeed this game does not show the credits after you've completed every story once. Here's the translation of what the host is saying when you do so:
How was your entertainment tonight? Did you enjoy it? Actually, there is more than one ending for each story. You, my guests, have only experienced a mere fraction. We look forward to seeing you again.
This has some similarities with #6933: DaSmileKat's NES Extra Mario Bros. "bad ending" in 05:24.35. The game is telling you you have more to do, however it's not outright telling you you've failed or it's a false ending. It's also related to [4469] NES Ghosts 'n Goblins by DreamYao in 08:04.45 and its "fake" ending after the first playtrhough. I personally feel this game has enough to offer for a single run-through, and "all endings" will in no way look similar to it. I'm leaning towards allowing this branch, but I don't have strong arguments for it.
Spikestuff wrote:
You can't select stories independently from the start, so this one doesn't apply.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Will the subtitles fit at the bottom center? Also it seems worth it to also delay the entries so they don't appear on screen transitions (which is a general advice in the pub manual anyway).
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Fog wrote:
The goal choices:
Moving aside from the main category itself, how the run goes about reaching these goals is also an issue. To obtain all the endings, the game is reset after reaching each ending. This essentially makes this run a compilation of five different movies under a single movie file. As mentioned above, this doesn't fly for Vault tier, but could possibly make sense for something aiming for Moons.
It sounds like several completely independent movies glued together. There's no point in doing that unless that leads to a special ending in itself or completes a certain in-game mode in its entirety.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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I agree with all of the above. I have a lot of practical problems with how things have been functioning for the decade+ I've been here (as both user and staff), but I won't be listing them here. I attest that this is 100% a team decision, everyone on staff had a say and was heard out. This is a learning curve too, and we aim to be a staff team that is professional, and also humane. We want to embrace and lead interesting developments, not to shy away from them. And we want the community to be able to trust us as a team. We want this site to feel cosy and exciting. Because that's how best works are created.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Yes, to me it still looks like a much much better option than having to deal with manual pausing (lua can improve that but still). It'd only need to be a dedicated option disabled by default. Also replacing magic numbers with comprehensible constants will make it a bit less hacky :D
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
