Post by Cardboard

Posted: 11/21/2006 2:00 AM

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adelikat

He/Him

Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3601)

Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee

I reserve a 10 technical rating only when a run meets two requirements: 1) I believe it to be absolutely frame perfect (not even 1 frame of improvement) 2) That it is difficult to achieve this frame perfection. By difficult, I don't mean amount of re-records or what tools are/were available. I mean the number of game elements that must be balanced in order to achieve this perfection. For instance, donkey kong got a 9 because it is much easier to perfect as opposed to monopoly (wait frames), or smb (glitches). For those who care, I only have rated the following movies with a 10 technical quality: smb1 warped, smb3 warped, monopoly, mike tyson's punchout, and ninja gaiden. Notable mentions are: donkey kong - frame perfect but not enough difficulty in order to warrant a 10 ciruc charlie - unimprovable in the levels, but the title screen can be reached sooner mm1-near perfect except the energy refills which are extraordinarily difficult to do frame perfect.

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

Posted: 11/21/2006 2:03 AM

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moozooh

Senior Moderator

Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5771
Location: Away

On the other hand, while SMB has to be perfected manually, Monopoly is bruteforced by a bot. Both of them are good enough on my scale, though. :)

Warp wrote:

Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.

Posted: 11/21/2006 3:53 AM

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nitsuja

Emulator Coder, Skilled player (1301)

Joined: 12/21/2004
Posts: 2687

adelikat wrote:

2) That it is difficult to achieve this frame perfection.

So, no matter how technically perfect the movie is, it will never technically be perfect? A technical rating less than 10 tells me "at least one person thinks this movie could be faster." I don't think something like that is a problem, however. The rating system seems to be working quite well, with very few unfathomable average ratings for anything. Honestly, my biggest problem with the ratings is that there is no way to submit a "null" rating for one's own movies to get them out of the non-rated movies section.

Posted: 11/22/2006 5:36 AM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

JXQ wrote:

By that logic, early videos that didn't even have frame advance capabilities should be rated less simply because of that.

You write as if that was a bad thing. I don't see why it would be. Early videos have their merit, but let's admit it: many of them are quite "sloppy" by today's standards. I don't see many of them deserving the highest technical rating. There may be exceptions, but very few.

Posted: 11/22/2006 5:42 AM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

nitsuja wrote:

So, no matter how technically perfect the movie is, it will never technically be perfect? A technical rating less than 10 tells me "at least one person thinks this movie could be faster."

IMO, while speed should be one of the main factors, if not the main factor, in the technical rating, the rating is a quite poor indicator if it is given by that alone. Think of "technical" as coming from the word "techniques": The more marvelous techniques the run uses, the highest the technical score. Techniques have one goal: To optimize the speed. What techniques were used for that goal? How innovative were they? How much work was put into studying and developing these techniques? Were the techniques used in an ingenuous way?

Posted: 12/7/2006 11:24 AM

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Randil

Skilled player (1887)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

I was just wondering if it's possible to implemenet a table, that shows the all the rated movies for each console, from highet rated to lowest. I'm thinking that this could both show ratings for "Entertainment value" and "Technical quality". As it is right now, if I'm interested in knowing what movie has the highest rated entertainment value, for example, I have to check every movie. Of course, this list would need to update itself automatically. I hope you understand what I mean, if not, I'll try to clarify some more... What are your opinions on this?

My own page on this site.

Posted: 12/7/2006 6:04 PM

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Zurreco

Former player

Joined: 8/1/2004
Posts: 2687
Location: Seattle, WA

Randil wrote:

I was just wondering if it's possible to implemenet a table, that shows the all the rated movies for each console, from highet rated to lowest. I'm thinking that this could both show ratings for "Entertainment value" and "Technical quality".

This is an example of how you can list every run of a certain system by it's rating, in descending order. It can be done for all systems. I don't know if you can list them by each individual rating, though.

hi nitrodon streamline: cyn-chine

Posted: 12/7/2006 6:40 PM

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Randil

Skilled player (1887)

Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden

Zurreco wrote:

This is an example of how you can list every run of a certain system by it's rating, in descending order. It can be done for all systems.

Thanks, that was pretty much what I meant. :) Though it would be nice to be able to sort them by the individual ratings too.

My own page on this site.

Posted: 12/10/2006 8:18 AM

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SmashManiac

Player (12)

Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 501

I suggest adding a new feature in the movie rating list. I'm always surprised that when I rate an obsoleted movie that the old movie still appears in the rated movies. It should be easy to hide the obsoleted rated movie when the latest one is rated too. This way, not only it would unclutter the rated list of useless entries, but it would also be easy to check if you've seen the latest version of a TAS or not. If you want to keep the old behavior (if for some weird reason people like more an obsoleted movie), at least it should be an option. BTW the movie rating list is a great feature, I use it all the time! Thanks you very much! :)

The BIG List of Randomizers

Posted: 3/13/2008 2:52 PM

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Bezman

Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185

Warp wrote:

Perhaps a page could be written outlining the basic ideas behind the two rating categories? If there's any interest, I could write some kind of draft and post it here.

I would be interested. I, seemingly like Baxter, have found myself doubting my ability to rate movies on a 'technical' scale. I haven't attempted TASing and so whilst I have a vague notion of what goes on, I can't say I'm able to tell whilst watching whether or not a few frames could have been saved. All I'd have to go on would be the 2nd-hand information gleaned by reading various threads on these boards. Frankly, I don't fully understand how anyone would be qualified to even guess at the technical quality of a TAS without either having tried that particular game themselves or having spoken to a bunch of folk who have, getting at least 2nd hand information. I assume the more experienced TASers have some techniques for making these judgement calls though. Any hints would be appreciated.

I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.

Posted: 3/13/2008 6:57 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

I suppose the technical rating is quite a difficult issue, and one which is very prone to cross-contamination of categories (in other words, if the TAS really sucks on entertainment, almost nobody is going to rate it very high on the technical side either, no matter how perfect it is technically). Rating a TAS for its technical quality would indeed require fair amount of work. Short of trying a TAS yourself, the only other alternative would be to read the submission text carefully (if it contains a "future improvements" type section, that's a quite clear sign that even the author himself was not completely satisfied about the technical quality of his own run) and, especially, the discussion thread about that submission. In the best-case scenario this thread will be full of questions along the lines of "at x:y, why did you do this instead of that", and the author would reply why. Also, in the best-case scenario, there exists a "tricks" page for that game, which you can consult for more information (unfortunately this is so for only a few games). In some cases submission texts assume that you have read all the submission texts of all the previous versions of that run, which requires even more work. If the submission description is terse and the submission discussion thread short, there aren't many options left. Then the only thing that one can do is to try to guess the technical quality of the run by watching it carefully. Of course in some cases this can be misleading: Sometimes something can look like sloppy playing, while in fact it's the most optimal way of playing that part (or doesn't affect the length of the movie negatively). Sometimes it's the other way around: There may be sloppy playing which is very hard to see because it looks optimal to the untrained eye. Sometimes a part of the movie may be optimal for what it's trying to do, but what is unknown to the viewer is that a different, faster route would actually be possible, which would save time. This is practically impossible to know without experience. I suppose that the technical rating means, in practice: "Does it *look* optimal to you, or does it look like it has mistakes/sloppy playing?" While looks can sometimes be deceiving, it's usually the only thing one can estimate. Anyways, it would be nice if people judged both categories separately: First judge from a purely entertainment point of view: Is it entertaining? Is it interesting to watch? Is it fun? Is it awesome? After that, *forget* about entertainment completely, and look at it from a purely technical point of view: Does it *look* technically good? Can you spot obvious sloppy playing? Is there something which could have been done better? Of course one could argue that nowadays most TASes are done in a technically perfect way (at least hopefully): Basically everyone uses frame advance to get frame perfection, and each single part of the run is (at least hopefully) polished to remove even the last wasted frame. In most games absolute optimization of used frames more or less removes the possibility of performing "technical stunts", which could be judged. Maybe technical quality could also be judged by examining things which seem to be optional in the run. For example, if jumping over an enemy can be done in many ways (all of which are equally fast), doing so the closest possible to the enemy (but without getting hit) could score better from a technical point of view than jumping from a safe distance (something which could be achieved in a regular real-time speedrun). Maybe that's also one of the things one could look for when judging the technical quality of the run: How much does it look like it would be possible to do in a regular speedrun, and how much does it look like it really shows off tool-assistance? Does it avoid enemies at pixel precision, instead of lazily jumping earlier? Does it wait for the last possible frame to do something (eg. jump onto a lift), instead of just lazily doing it earlier? In general: When there are several options for performing some action (without wasting time), does it go the lazy way, of does it show off by doing it at an inhumanly precise moment?

Posted: 3/19/2008 3:10 PM

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Bezman

Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185

Warp wrote:

<...>In general: When there are several options for performing some action (without wasting time), does it go the lazy way, of does it show off by doing it at an inhumanly precise moment?

Thanks for all that. I guess that all goes with the ultimate goal of looking as good as possible ("creating art"), whilst achieving the fastest time - not just the latter. With the number of obsoleting movies, it seems natural that technical quality will improve. Still, in rating (8,9 or 10 normally), I find it almost impossible to distinguish between movies of great quality. Perhaps this is tied into the law of diminishing returns - here, at greater levels of quality, only those familiar with previous runs, techniques etc. will be able to distinguish, whilst to those who are somewhat out of the loop, like myself, a 2s improvement over a previously 'perfect' run won't seem much more impressive, difficult as it may have been, technically. Your few paragraphs certainly help me a bit, though.

I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.

Posted: 9/26/2008 11:15 PM

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Baxter

Skilled player (1403)

Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821

I'll post my thoughts on the rating system here once more. I also posted them one page ago, but whatever... I have a few additional points (I hope). Current rating system You are able to give integers (0, 1, 2, ..., 10) to both "the entertainment value of this movie" and "The technical quality of this movie (how close it is to perfection)". The entertainment value counts for 2/3 to your final score, and the technical value for 1/3. My suggestion You are able to give a single decimal number (0.0, 0.1, ..., 7.6, 7.7, ..., 10.0). It's just a single rating for the TAS where you consider whatever you think is important to whatever extent. This is a better rating system because - Even though right after the technical rating it says "(how close it is to perfection)", no one really agrees on what it actually means, and gives it an own meaning. This might not be a problem to many, but it can be used to argue against people who say they are interested to see what technical rating people are giving. - Assuming that most people do view the technical rating as a measure how close the movie to perfection is, is this a good thing for this to influence the final score? It seems like 'easy' games are just getting a rating boost by this. A game like Donkey Kong, SMB or Circus Charlie takes a lot less effort to make more perfect than a long game with lots of lag and randomness. It might be a technically much better achievement to create the hard TAS, even though it's obviously not as close to perfection due to randomness and such. Still the 'easy' game choice seems to get an instant advantage. (Note that the argument "But the harder game will be more entertaining." is a really bad argument, since there is no guarantee for this.) - Assuming that most people do view the technical rating as a measure how close the movie to perfection is, how does one know how close a particular movie comes to perfection? The truth is, you have no idea of determining that until you actually TAS the game yourself, and notice howmany, frames you can save. Neither the tricks used, the amount of rerecords used, the author, whatever else you could possibly know of this movie by watching it. Of course, if you spot obvious errors you might get an idea, but most of the TASes obviously don't show these, as they wouldn't be published. On this very page, Adelikat mentioned "mm1-near perfect except the energy refills which are extraordinarily difficult to do frame perfect." The currently published movie improved upon this however in nearly every room. (And 3 of the only 5 movies he mentioned to have given a 10 as technical rating, were obsoleted. This is btw not in any way meant to downtalk Adelikats judgement, he has a very good judgement, it's just that technical rating in this sense cannot be known, which was my point.) One can also see a very strong correspondence in some cases to people being entertained by a TAS, and the technical rating they give, even if this strictly shouldn't be the case. - People might disagree on the fact that entertainment counts for 2/3 and technical rating for 1/3. Some people might find entertainment more important than that, or less important. People might also consider other things besides these two things. Would it not be better for each person to consider whatever he finds important, weigh it as high as he thinks and compiles it into a single rating? - People might want to rate higher than a 8, but wouldn't quite give it a 9 (or want to be between some other numbers). Some people consider a 10 to be a perfect score, and are reluctant to hand it out, but it's the only option if something is worth more than a 9. Being able to give ratings like a 8.2 or a 9.3 would solve this problem. - Being able to rate a 8.2 or 9.3 (or whatever) will also enable you to list the TASes you've rated better by rating. This way, you will truly get a list of TASes you like best to TASes you 'like' worst. The current system doesn't produce this kind of list for two reasons: 1) You can only rate integers, and many movies will get the same rating, even if you like one movie a little better than the other. 2) The technical rating will give boosts to some TASes, even though you don't like them as much... this will especially be the case for the 'easy' games I mentioned earlier. - The labels the current integers have "slightly above average" and so on are very confusing, and might not represent what people think. It doesn't matter if one person gives his movies an average rating of a 5, while some other gives them an average rating of an 8, as long as their own list is consistent. I don't think these labels are needed. Edit: Maybe a bit unrelevant to my suggestion above, but it's also about the ratings. I find it somewhat hard to get to the rating list of other users. http://tasvideos.org/rating.exe/my/ This page shows a list of the top 15 raters, it would be nice if their names linked to their rating lists.

http://tasvideos.org/Baxter.html

Posted: 9/27/2008 9:55 AM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

Baxter wrote:

My suggestion You are able to give a single decimal number (0.0, 0.1, ..., 7.6, 7.7, ..., 10.0).

Basically you are suggesting a value range of 0-100. I'm not completely convinced such accuracy is necessary.

- Even though right after the technical rating it says "(how close it is to perfection)", no one really agrees on what it actually means, and gives it an own meaning.

I have always had the opinion that people understand the technical rating wrong. It was not what I had in mind when we created the voting system. Most people seem to think that the technical rating evaluates how many errors there are in the run, ie. approximately how many frames could still be saved with better running in relation to the movie length. That's not what I was thinking. Ok, it can be *part* of the judgment, but only a small part. (Certainly if a movie is extremely sloppy it shouldn't get a very high technical score, but most runs are not sloppy, but they don't necessarily deserve a high technical score either.) I thought about the technical score to be an evaluation of the *techniques* used in the run. In other words, rather than being a pure optimal-frames/actual-frames-in-the-run score, it's an estimation of the quality and diversity of techniques used in the run. A bit like figure skating: The judges don't estimate how fast they are skating, but how well they perform their techniques (and how many there are). Does it perform heavy luck manipulation? If so, does it do it to its great advantage? Is it "cool"? Does it zip through walls? Is the zipping performed with good style and technique? Does it "look good"? What kind of tools were used to make the run? Was lua scripting used to aid in making the run? Was a bot written to create part of the run? Was the game disassembled in order to understand how the rng works? That kind of things. Even a frame-perfect run may deserve a low technical score if it doesn't show advanced and well-executed techniques. Perhaps the game in question just doesn't lend itself to awesome techniques, but then it's simply a poor game choice. I have suggested this a couple of times in the past, but always shot down. For whatever reason I cannot comprehend, people don't want this. They want the technical score to be a pure optimal-frames/used-frames score, and nothing else. Interpreting it like that makes the whole technical score kind of moot and uninteresting. It has no value. It doesn't say anything.

Posted: 9/27/2008 10:16 AM

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Baxter

Skilled player (1403)

Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821

Warp wrote:

Baxter wrote:
My suggestion You are able to give a single decimal number (0.0, 0.1, ..., 7.6, 7.7, ..., 10.0).
Basically you are suggesting a value range of 0-100. I'm not completely convinced such accuracy is necessary.
- Even though right after the technical rating it says "(how close it is to perfection)", no one really agrees on what it actually means, and gives it an own meaning.
I have always had the opinion that people understand the technical rating wrong. It was not what I had in mind when we created the voting system. Most people seem to think that the technical rating evaluates how many errors there are in the run, ie. approximately how many frames could still be saved with better running in relation to the movie length. That's not what I was thinking. Ok, it can be *part* of the judgment, but only a small part. (Certainly if a movie is extremely sloppy it shouldn't get a very high technical score, but most runs are not sloppy, but they don't necessarily deserve a high technical score either.) I thought about the technical score to be an evaluation of the *techniques* used in the run. In other words, rather than being a pure optimal-frames/actual-frames-in-the-run score, it's an estimation of the quality and diversity of techniques used in the run. A bit like figure skating: The judges don't estimate how fast they are skating, but how well they perform their techniques (and how many there are). Does it perform heavy luck manipulation? If so, does it do it to its great advantage? Is it "cool"? Does it zip through walls? Is the zipping performed with good style and technique? Does it "look good"? What kind of tools were used to make the run? Was lua scripting used to aid in making the run? Was a bot written to create part of the run? Was the game disassembled in order to understand how the rng works? That kind of things. Even a frame-perfect run may deserve a low technical score if it doesn't show advanced and well-executed techniques. Perhaps the game in question just doesn't lend itself to awesome techniques, but then it's simply a poor game choice. I have suggested this a couple of times in the past, but always shot down. For whatever reason I cannot comprehend, people don't want this. They want the technical score to be a pure optimal-frames/used-frames score, and nothing else. Interpreting it like that makes the whole technical score kind of moot and uninteresting. It has no value. It doesn't say anything.

Well, I gave several reasons why a 0-100 scale would be very welcome... and why I do think this accuracy is needed. Could you give some reasons why "you are not completely convinced", and particularly respond to some of the reasons I gave? As for the technical rating, what you are suggesting would indeed be slightly better, but like I said, that's not how the large majority interprets it, and it's not what it says right at the side of the rating: "(how close it is to perfection)". I gave several reasons why to get rid of the technical rating, one being that people give different meaning to it, and you seem to agree with this. And to the next reasons I gave you basically said: "Yeah, but that's not how it should be interpreted.". That might be right, but it is interpreted in that way, which would be a good reason to get rid of it. A few more direct responses to what I wrote would be appreciated, rather than a description of what technical rating should be.

http://tasvideos.org/Baxter.html

Posted: 9/27/2008 10:26 AM

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Bezman

Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185

Warp wrote:

I thought about the technical score to be an evaluation of the *techniques* used in the run. ... Even a frame-perfect run may deserve a low technical score if it doesn't show advanced and well-executed techniques. Perhaps the game in question just doesn't lend itself to awesome techniques, but then it's simply a poor game choice. ... I have suggested this a couple of times in the past, but always shot down. For whatever reason I cannot comprehend, people don't want this.

I can think of some possible reasons: - it's a slightly harder system to comprehend. Though 'how close is it to perfection' is near-impossible to judge without plenty of research, it is at least a fairly simple thing to understand. - Having the technical score be used to judge 'techniques used' rather than 'closeness to perfection' introduces a large degree of subjectivity. Since the 'entertainment' value is entirely subjective, maybe folk want a more objective score to 'balance it up'? - If the 'technical' score is used to mean 'techniques used' then - as you say - some games may never have a submission with a perfect technical score. I think that idea could rankle with some folk. Personally though, I like the idea of rewarding extraneous technical virtues - such as superhumanly late jumping. I like the idea that simpler games should recieve lower scores for fewer techniques being used - certainly settles Baxter's qualm. And though I have no rationale for this, I would rather that score be slightly subjective - as your system kinda allows. If it were purely about the perfection of speed, then really only time and the stats of this and future attempts could suggest one way or the other.

I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.

Posted: 9/27/2008 10:33 AM

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Baxter

Skilled player (1403)

Joined: 5/31/2004
Posts: 1821

Bezman wrote:

Personally though, I like the idea of rewarding extraneous technical virtues - such as superhumanly late jumping. I like the idea that simpler games should recieve lower scores for fewer techniques being used - certainly settles Baxter's qualm.

Well... three points to be made here: 1) Even though this ideal would indeed solve that problem I mentioned, the reality is that people generally don't view technical rating like this. 2) Technical rating, for whatever people might think it means, has a steady 1/3 influence, and some people might want to give this a heavier weight, and some people might want to give it a lighter weight. With a single rating, they can give it as much weight as they want, and compress it into a single value, combined with entertainment and whatever else they think is important. 3) With two seperate scores, you won't really end up with a rating list that represents something that goes from movies that you like best to movies that you don't really like. I think having such a list would be quite nice. For this, being able to rate 0-100 is also important.

http://tasvideos.org/Baxter.html

Posted: 9/27/2008 11:03 AM

Quote

Bezman

Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185

Fair point on 'ordering of favourites'. Maybe - if it's not incredibly hard to code in - Warp and Bisquit could have a separately derived 'favourites' list that just allows you to order a bunch of movies however you want - like on Newgrounds. One advantage of the 2 separate rating is that folk coming to the site can weigh them however they want - they can click to see the top-rated movies for entertainment and pick those that also have reasonable technical scores. They could just watch the top-rated movies for technical scores. Just use the overall combined rating. Or any combination. A single combined rating wouldn't be quite as useful for folk on the outside, in that sense.

I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.

Posted: 9/27/2008 11:04 AM

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Cardboard

Skilled player (1673)

Joined: 6/11/2006
Posts: 818
Location: Arboga, Sweden

Or, we just remove the ratings of the movies. No, really. It causes more controversy than good. Actually I kinda doubt if it causes any good, apart from huge ego boosts.

Warp wrote:

omg lol this is so fake!!!1 the nes cant produce music like this!

Posted: 9/27/2008 11:26 AM

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Bezman

Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185

Allows newbies to choose a starting point, based on more information, automatically assimilated? If neither stars nor ratings existed when I arrived, I'd have just looked through the Snes games that I've already completed and probably missed a lot of gems.

I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.

Posted: 9/27/2008 11:30 AM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

Joined: 3/10/2004
Posts: 7698
Location: Finland

Cardboard wrote:

Or, we just remove the ratings of the movies. No, really. It causes more controversy than good.

We could just as well terminate the entire website and the bittorrent tracker. You know, because tool-assisted speedruns cause controversy in the speedrunning community (even today). We must be Politically Correct and avoid all constroversies and anything that might cause disagreement. This is, after all, the current PC trend here.

Bezman wrote:

If neither stars nor ratings existed when I arrived, I'd have just looked through the Snes games that I've already completed and probably missed a lot of gems.

Removing the stars is one of the symptoms of the current Political Correctness trend here, and I still heavily oppose the decision. They were clearly useful for first-time visitors, and removing them lessens the quality of the website. But of course it's more important to avoid causing controversies than to make the website more approachable to newcomers.

Posted: 9/27/2008 12:31 PM

Quote

Bezman

Joined: 2/7/2008
Posts: 185

Cardboard wrote:

they rather ignore runs with lower ratings, which I don't think is too good

Folk are always going to pay attention to something at the expense of another. Remove the ratings and folk will pay attention to runs based on the game, screenshot and the other info that pops up on the main list. Of course, this 'technical' info can be opaque until we're familiar with the ins and outs of the game (and previous runs) and doesn't actually do that great a job of suggesting to us how entertaining or technically proficient the run actually is. Heck, most would just ignore all the games they're not as familiar with - that's what I would have done at any rate. Like it or not, some things are always gonna be ignored. if it's any consolation, I think that a big fan of a particular game would watch that game's run, regardless of the rating. And folk who put weight behind a certain user will be likely to look at their top-rated movies and watch them - it needn't be all about the aggregate.

I'm just some random guy. Don't let my words get you riled - I have my opinions but they're only mine.

Posted: 9/27/2008 3:40 PM

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adelikat

He/Him

Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3601)

Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee

Warp wrote:

I have always had the opinion that people understand the technical rating wrong. It was not what I had in mind when we created the voting system. Most people seem to think that the technical rating evaluates how many errors there are in the run, ie. approximately how many frames could still be saved with better running in relation to the movie length. That's not what I was thinking. Ok, it can be *part* of the judgment, but only a small part. (Certainly if a movie is extremely sloppy it shouldn't get a very high technical score, but most runs are not sloppy, but they don't necessarily deserve a high technical score either.) I thought about the technical score to be an evaluation of the *techniques* used in the run. In other words, rather than being a pure optimal-frames/actual-frames-in-the-run score, it's an estimation of the quality and diversity of techniques used in the run. A bit like figure skating: The judges don't estimate how fast they are skating, but how well they perform their techniques (and how many there are). Does it perform heavy luck manipulation? If so, does it do it to its great advantage? Is it "cool"? Does it zip through walls? Is the zipping performed with good style and technique? Does it "look good"? What kind of tools were used to make the run? Was lua scripting used to aid in making the run? Was a bot written to create part of the run? Was the game disassembled in order to understand how the rng works? That kind of things. Even a frame-perfect run may deserve a low technical score if it doesn't show advanced and well-executed techniques. Perhaps the game in question just doesn't lend itself to awesome techniques, but then it's simply a poor game choice. I have suggested this a couple of times in the past, but always shot down. For whatever reason I cannot comprehend, people don't want this. They want the technical score to be a pure optimal-frames/used-frames score, and nothing else. Interpreting it like that makes the whole technical score kind of moot and uninteresting. It has no value. It doesn't say anything.

This is NOT at all the impression I get from "how close to perfection it is". I like this rating sytem better than "how many frames it can be improved on". I think this shows a failure in communication and the rating system should be reworded.

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

Posted: 9/27/2008 4:01 PM

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jimsfriend

Former player

Joined: 1/17/2006
Posts: 775
Location: Deign

Cardboard. why not let these people have their fun? You gays get worked up over the stupidest stuff. liek Oh Em GEE! you obsoleted MY run you can't spell you just play for pride you're hypocrite you compared me to phil you made fun of phil you can't speak english you said DMG you rated that movie wrong you are illogical you offended my religion you dig in theg arbage to feed ur cock-eyed momma these movies are about speed only no these movies are more about entertainment no these movies are more about it doesn't matter lets argue about what you think this movie should be about because your opinion is obviously wrong you use bold emphasis too much and it bothers me you are using stupid bbcode markup I agree with Fabian. you made a run on sentence you shouldn't post because your posts are never useful anyway you spam too much you you you picked the wrong movie to give a star you used poor word choice when describing how to use xyz feature on the site you used the wrong rom version you criticize too much you never get anything done here you are HappyLee! you are arguing just to argue THEN WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU ARGUING BACK, NUMSKULL?! you just want your name on this run you just want to get his name off the run you voted no on a run that obviously should get a yes from everyone on the planet you are too elitist you are playing favorites you just have a vendetta against this game you lick me like a lollipop you shouldn't show *MY* tricks to everyone you don't know what the S in TAS means you use passive-aggressive attacks too much you have got to be kidding. Hey mouthdrooler, you missed some things we get worked up over :O~~~

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