This is a good point, Dan, and Wai Wai World was the same way as well. So, as long as it reaches the credits, it's OK, then...sounds fine to me.
Honestly, I think all movies made from now on should end upon completing the stated objective, or doing whatever else is necessary to reach the credits...but if you're improving a run that didn't do this, you should keep the same ending point for comparison purposes.
-Josh
but then you take my 75 perchance chance of winning, if we was to go one-on-one, and then add 66 and two-thirds ch...percents...i got a 141 and two-thirds chance of winning at sacrifice
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Actually, there is a stated objective for Cheetahmen II. Right from the intro:
STOP DOCTOR MORBIS BEFORE ITS TOO LATE FOR THE CHEETAHMEN.
It's just that the game let's you go only so far with it, and I completed it as far as it lets you carry it out, which is the defeat of the Ape Man. In fact, I think I may have ended it a little too early, but I'm not going to resubmit it just to add some frames to prevent the viewer from pausing the game before the Ape Man falls. In fact, if the only way you can slow the completion time down is if you pause the game, as is the case with the current Super Mario run, I wouldn't worry about it.
But moving on...
I'm working on version 3 of my G.I. Joe run. There is a cutscene I can skip after I beat the boss, but if I let it sit, it will go on by itself after about five seconds. Is the consensus here that I shouldn't bother skipping it like I planned to do with this run? It's not very exciting, just a panoramic picture of a mountain with some seizure inducing flashing meant to imitate a big explosion.
I feel kind of guilty about setting off this whole debate...
A hundred years from now, they will gaze upon my work and marvel at my skills but never know my name. And that will be good enough for me.
The reason why Cheetahmen II breaks the rules is beacuse you cannot achieve your objective, not because there is not stated objective.
</clarification>
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Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
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what if there's a game you hit the last boss and there's a big down hill, and if you let go the controller the character will slowly go down the hill entering the final door without needed input to see the final credits. will you stop as soon as possible so you get your shortest "fmv" file but will result a longer AVI, or do you think you should hold right untill it has reached the door (even though you could've ended earlier)?
i think the answer is clear, what i did was just to extend the concept to make it clear. you should hold right, the final objective is the AVI, not the fmv. that's my opinion.
you shoudnt skip the credits, unless they require you to do so.
I think the movie shouldn't be stopped until the credits/ending movie cannot be reached faster.
This is in agreement with FODA, in that situation you should hold right to trigger the credits sooner.
To contrast, I felt I could end the NG run when I delt the last hit to the boss because the credits/end movie would trigger at the same time regardless of what I did. Thus giving an easy point to compare final times.
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The quickest way to reach the point where user input can no longer affect the game is usually to die rapidly and stop recording at the game over screen. If the object of a timeattack is to finish the game with as little input as possible, this is therefore the optimal strategy.
Obviously, this 'd be silly. The point of a time attack is not just to end the game quickly, it is to succesfully complete the game quickly. Exactly what successful completion entails is an arbitrary decision that we have to do on a per-game basis. For SMB, for example, you can concievably define sucessful completion as Mario getting past Bowser in 8-4, Mario touching the axe in 8-4, the outro text having been fully displayed, Mario making his first jump or whatever else you feel like. On this site, the the game is over when the axe is touched in 8-4 but this is only by virtue of consensus.
Now, point is, since we already have to define the conditions required for a time attack to be considered succesfull for each and every game, there's no point in ending the recording before those conditions are met. Keep recording until the game is sucesfully completed.
I just thought of an idea. How about stopping the movie as soon as the game knows that it's going to have to start playing the ending. For example, if you start sliding down a hill, and when you reach the bottom of the hill it changes some value in the game's memory that tells it it has to start playing the ending, then you stop the movie when you reach the bottom of the hill. In SMB this would clearly be when you touch the axe. In SMW, even though you can still move after hitting Bowser the final time, it's at the final hit when the game decides that a certain amount of time later the ending will start. I think this would work pretty well for every game.
In SMW you can produce a funny "bug" (or maybe it was intended) if you keep the UP-button pressed until the credits start. I think I will do this in my movie, because it doesn't influence the length of the .avi video in any way, and that's what's important imo.
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MF: All well and good, now you just need to define what "the ending" is for every single game and when said game knows it has to start it. All of which will be every bit as arbitrary as any other method of determining when the game is sucesfullly completed.
Your two examples are intuitive, yes, but not indicative of any magic "game ending now"-bits being flipped in memory. I could just as well say that the ending of SMB starts when the final Bowser room is no longer in view or that the ending of SMW starts when the velocity and position of the last launched mecha-koopa is irrevocably defined in game memory to values that will result in a dead Boswer. These definitions are perhaps less intuitive, but equally valid.
Your two examples are intuitive, yes, but not indicative of any magic "game ending now"-bits being flipped in memory. I could just as well say that the ending of SMB starts when the final Bowser room is no longer in view or that the ending of SMW starts when the velocity and position of the last launched mecha-koopa is irrevocably defined in game memory to values that will result in a dead Boswer. These definitions are perhaps less intuitive, but equally valid.
Even you you consider the ending of SMB later on, the "game ending now" bit is flipped when you touch the axe, and once you touch it the game decides that there's a certain amount of time before the ending starts. In SMW, even if you threw the koopa already, the game isn't like a chess program and it doesn't look ahead to see whether or not it's going to hit Bowser. Once you hit Bowser the "game ending now" bit is flipped and the game decides that in a certain amount of time the ending will start. I think the point where the bit is flipped would be intuitive for every game. Can anyone think of any examples where it's not?
Well, if you have to reach the door to end the game then your objective is to reach the door. Not kill the final boss. So the movie should end when you enter the door.
BoltR wrote:
{snip}
However, what if you have an "Enter Your Initials" box that times out?
How about in that one Lolo game that Bag of Magic Food did where you have the Rock, Paper, Scissors duel with The Great Devil. It looked like Bisqwit moved the arrows around so he could win the duel. Or was it unlosable?
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
Well, if you have to reach the door to end the game then your objective is to reach the door. Not kill the final boss. So the movie should end when you enter the door.
but dont you think it's easier to tell everyone to make shortest avis than defining game-ending points?
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FODA wrote:
but dont you think it's easier to tell everyone to make shortest avis than defining game-ending points?
How do you make a run in the first place without knowing where the game-ending point is? If you don't have a defined game ending point, the shortest avi is one frame of play, which 'd be silly. For the time attack to be at all meaningful, you have to define game ending points beforehand - why not stop the movie at them?
Michael Fried wrote:
Even you you consider the ending of SMB later on, the "game ending now" bit is flipped when you touch the axe, and once you touch it the game decides that there's a certain amount of time before the ending starts. In SMW, even if you threw the koopa already, the game isn't like a chess program and it doesn't look ahead to see whether or not it's going to hit Bowser. Once you hit Bowser the "game ending now" bit is flipped and the game decides that in a certain amount of time the ending will start in a certain amount of time.?
You miss my point. There are no universally defined "game ending now" bits, you just picked those two conditions arbitrarily. They're intuitive choices for game endings, but they're neither more or less "correct" than any other alteration of memory in the course of playing the game. That it's your opinion that the 'bowser is dead'-bit is more important than the 'koopa on inevitable collision course'-bit is largely irrelevant, both can be used as goal posts for the game if you feel like it.
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i think i made myself clear when i said making shortest AVIS possible OF COURSE to see the ending credits, not to record 1 frame... : / it's easier to see which avi is shorter. it's not easy to define ending points. you end SMB when touching the axe, but imagine you having to wait for the screen to change after touching the axe or you could press any key and the screen would change faster to the ending. the game ending point is not clear on many games, thus i keep my pov: making short avis is the way to go.
You miss my point. There are no universally defined "game ending now" bits, you just picked those two conditions arbitrarily. They're intuitive choices for game endings, but they're neither more or less "correct" than any other alteration of memory in the course of playing the game. That it's your opinion that the 'bowser is dead'-bit is more important than the 'koopa on inevitable collision course'-bit is largely irrelevant, both can be used as goal posts for the game if you feel like it.
I think you missed my point. It's not about which bit is more important in my opinion. It's about which bit the game uses to decide when to start the ending. The game isn't programmed to have the princess start floating down a certain amount of time after the koopa is on an inevitable collision course.
But where would Ninja Gaiden fall? Is it better to cut out the story sequence for the want of a shorter AVI?
What about a name entry?
I've never played Ninja Gaiden so I don't know, but for games with name entry, if it's necessary for the ending to continue then you should enter your name.
What if it times out?
At 5 seconds?
At 10 seconds?
At 60 seconds?
(I know I'm a bastard for playing Devil's Advocate, but it's the only thing I'm good at. ^_^;;)
Build a man a fire, warm him for a day,
Set a man on fire, warm him for the rest of his life.
What if it times out?
At 5 seconds?
At 10 seconds?
At 60 seconds?
Do you mean that the name entry screen will go away after the amount of time and the ending will continue anyway? Then you should enter your name because it's only when you enter your name that the "definite amount of time until certain events in the ending" bit is flipped.
How about in that one Lolo game that Bag of Magic Food did where you have the Rock, Paper, Scissors duel with The Great Devil. It looked like Bisqwit moved the arrows around so he could win the duel. Or was it unlosable?
It's unlosable. In fact, it's rigged so that there's no way to speed it up or slow it down, so I decided it was fair to exclude it from the movie file and consider it part of the ending. I like how in the AVI, it makes Great Devil look stupid for not realizing Lolo's stupidity and just choosing paper every time, while as an .fmv, it can be left as an exercise to the viewer to prove that the battle can't be lost or won faster. So no, Bisqwit didn't do anything; it wouldn't have mattered if he did. I'll have to remember to make a note of that in the submission text for my second run. (I've only finished a third of it, but it's already eleven seconds faster! Yippee!)
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
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Michael Fried wrote:
It's about which bit the game uses to decide when to start the ending.
... which you've just arbitrarily defined as Bowser dying. We could pick any given memory state as the start of the ending, it depends on what we feel the ending entails. Entirely subjective.
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OmnipotentEntity wrote:
But where would Ninja Gaiden fall? Is it better to cut out the story sequence for the want of a shorter AVI?
What about a name entry?
What if it times out?
At 5 seconds?
At 10 seconds?
At 60 seconds?
(I know I'm a bastard for playing Devil's Advocate, but it's the only thing I'm good at. ^_^;;)
I've already answered all those questions:
- you shouldnt skip the ending sequences;
- you should enter your name only if there's something later on. if there's nothing but a "game over" message (like in tmnt2) or the game goes back to the tiltle screen, then the name entry shouldnt even go into the AVI.
