Post by Blublu

Posted: 8/5/2009 8:15 PM

Post subject: Impossible TAS

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Heisanevilgenius

Active player (405)

Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708

There are lots of runs that take a really tough game and make them look easy, but an idea came to me today: What about making a game absolutely impossible? There are some conventionally impossible games like Dragon's Lair and Takeshi no Chousenjou that have already been TASed, but even games as tough as that are trivial when you can do everything with frame-precise accuracy. So, what do I mean by making a game impossible? I mean, take a game that has a lot of customizable difficulty or gameplay options to ramp up the difficulty to something that the developers never actually expected people would actually try because it's ludicrously difficult. Example: If you play Dr. Mario in Tetris & Dr. Mario for SNES, you can play any level from 1 to 20. Level 20 is absolutely trivial for a TAS. But you can also compete against a computer opponent. So what if you set yourself to level 20 and set the computer to level 1? There should be no way you can beat that. The opponent can clear those four viruses away pretty easily, no matter how fast you churn through yours. But if you can luck manipulate and keep unleashing combos that screw up your opponent, even that might be possible. Any thoughts on highly customizable games that can be manipulated this way? Would this make for an entertaining run?

Posted: 8/5/2009 8:32 PM

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DaTeL237

Active player (354)

Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands

There are a lot of games that have the goal of surviving as long as possible (Tower Defense games come to mind but there's more)... and a TAS might make it a lot further but there simply is no ending also, i'm sure the makers of Goldeneye (N64) never thought DLTK (http://come.thengamer.com/DarkLTK/index.html) would be possible but now people don't even need TAS for that :D

TASes: [URL=http://tasvideos.org/Movies-298up-Obs.html]Mr. Nutz (SNES), Young Merlin 100% (SNES), Animaniacs 100% (SNES)[/URL]

Posted: 8/5/2009 9:44 PM

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Dromiceius

Joined: 10/3/2005
Posts: 1332

DaTeL237 wrote:

There are a lot of games that have the goal of surviving as long as possible (Tower Defense games come to mind but there's more)... and a TAS might make it a lot further but there simply is no ending also, i'm sure the makers of Goldeneye (N64) never thought DLTK (http://come.thengamer.com/DarkLTK/index.html) would be possible but now people don't even need TAS for that :D

Perfect Dark is (arguably, I guess) an even better example. In the challenge mode, we can set up situations that few could survive, like seven Darksims vs the player in... uh... I want to say "The Temple". Or any level that has a wide open space with no cover (wherein the player would have to dodge bullets like he was goddamn Neo.) Arm everyone with cyclones, and I don't think even a TASer could survive that without depending on lame tactics, like camping or using that gun that could shoot through walls. Edit: Okay, maybe they could- just get there first, and nail everyone in the head as they stream in, assuming the turn speed is enough to keep up. There are probably better ideas... like doing it unarmed, or some other artificial stipulation.

Posted: 8/6/2009 4:31 AM

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Heisanevilgenius

Active player (405)

Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708

In a TAS, though, that would still be trivial. The fastest guns in the game are in fact pistols (because the firing rate only depends on how fast you hit the trigger, whereas the machine guns have a set firing rate). Even on a console, if you play with the slow motion feature and give the computer players an RCP, you can squeeze off all 8 bullets of your Falcon 2 in the time it takes them to fire off two to three rounds. Even with Dark Sims, you can manipulate the sims to attack you one at a time, and force their shots to miss, while you peg them with two ridiculously fast Magsecs as they struggle with their double cyclones. Although, since Perfect Dark is highly customizable, you can stack the odds even more heavily against you. Use seven Dark Sims, all on the same team against you. King of the Hill or Capture the Briefcase, so the only way to win is to protect an area of the map (otherwise all you have to do is stay one kill ahead of them, which is easy if you have explosives and they outnumber you. Pointing a rocket launcher at the floor and blowing yourself up is likely to take out at least one of the others). Add shields.

Posted: 8/6/2009 4:56 AM

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Derakon

Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960

Part of the point of using Perfect Dark is so you can deny yourself any useful weapons. The Cyclone, and especially the Reaper, have absolutely terrible accuracy; in the latter case, you're lucky to hit a target that's standing two meters in front of you when you're pointing right at them. You can easily demonstrate this for yourself by turning on paintball mode and spraying a hallway. Yet the AI has perfect accuracy with them from across the room. So going up against Darksims with the only weapons available being Cyclones is a recipe for disaster. Reapers might actually be more feasible since there's a spin-up time involved, which would give you more leeway in dodging behind walls. Under normal circumstances, TASer vs. Darksim just becomes "perfect reflexes that can plan ahead vs. just perfect reflexes", and it's pretty clear who's going to win that exchange.

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Posted: 8/6/2009 6:41 AM

Post subject: Re: Impossible TAS

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CtrlAltDestroy

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Joined: 2/23/2005
Posts: 786

Heisanevilgenius wrote:

I mean, take a game that has a lot of customizable difficulty or gameplay options to ramp up the difficulty to something that the developers never actually expected people would actually try because it's ludicrously difficult. Example: If you play Dr. Mario in Tetris & Dr. Mario for SNES, you can play any level from 1 to 20. Level 20 is absolutely trivial for a TAS.

And that's not even to mention how you can crank the level up to 255 and have the pills fall at practically 20G speed.

Posted: 8/6/2009 12:14 PM

Post subject: Re: Impossible TAS

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moozooh

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Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
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Heisanevilgenius wrote:

I mean, take a game that has a lot of customizable difficulty or gameplay options to ramp up the difficulty to something that the developers never actually expected people would actually try because it's ludicrously difficult.

Interesting that you posted that a few days after I mentioned Battle Garegga on IRC. To give you some context, many arcade games have so called rank — dynamic difficulty that ramps up if the player is doing well. Battle Garegga, a seminal 1996 shmup by Raizing, made the whole gameplay idea revolve around constantly increasing rank. And its maximum difficulty isn't just very hard, it's devised to be quite literally impossible to clear in unassisted conditions. This video shows stage 5 (of 7) played at max rank with invincibility cheat. Still not TAS-proof, though, but still very challenging. And that's unaltered game, driven to insanity with just user input.

Warp wrote:

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

Posted: 8/6/2009 7:55 PM

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Heisanevilgenius

Active player (405)

Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708

Yeah, but that's how the game is designed. I'm talking about taking a game beyond what the developers intended just to make it as truly difficult as possible.

Posted: 8/6/2009 7:58 PM

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Warp

Banned User, Former player

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

There's a small section in Gradius 3 after a boss battle where tons of rocks fall. The rocks can be destroyed, and the TAS aims for 100% kills, but there are so many rocks and they fall so fast that it's seemingly a physical impossibility to destroy them all (and thus the TAS doesn't destroy any of them, kind of for consistency). Small thing, but could be classified as an impossible goal even for a TAS.

Posted: 8/6/2009 8:01 PM

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moozooh

Senior Moderator

Joined: 8/4/2005
Posts: 5770
Location: Away

Heisanevilgenius wrote:

Yeah, but that's how the game is designed. I'm talking about taking a game beyond what the developers intended just to make it as truly difficult as possible.

I was just illustrating that some developers actually had a similar idea of making a game impossible in mind, and implemented it into their games as well.

Warp wrote:

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

Posted: 8/7/2009 12:18 AM

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4matsy

Joined: 4/25/2004
Posts: 498

Tengen's version of Ms. Pac-Man is pretty ridiculous on Crazy difficulty with the Pac Booster turned off... Another possibility would be starting the movie from a savestate at the options screen where the starting level is hacked to 33 or above. This causes the game to keep going to level 255, and it still keeps getting harder and harder...then it loops around to 0 and eventually gets back to 32 and ends. Would be funny to see the player survive increasingly impossible-looking levels. :p (At least that's how the NES version works. The SNES version, on the arcade maze set starting at level 33, plays a few more rounds of arcade mazes, then starts cycling through the other maze sets with weird glitched colors, then crashes once you finish them all. Weird. <_<') Or hack the difficulty above Crazy, instead of messing with the starting level. That works with the normal 32 levels, widening the speed gap between Ms. Pac and the ghosts even further then Crazy does...

Posted: 8/11/2009 11:21 PM

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Heisanevilgenius

Active player (405)

Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708

Would someone want to watch someone playing through 255 levels?

Posted: 10/10/2009 11:02 AM

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GibusWearingMann

Joined: 8/22/2009
Posts: 58

Omni-label for all movies having to do with this thread:Plays at hardest difficulty.

Posted: 10/10/2009 11:10 AM

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MUGG

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Joined: 5/15/2007
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Location: Germany

Example: If you play Dr. Mario in Tetris & Dr. Mario for SNES, you can play any level from 1 to 20. Level 20 is absolutely trivial for a TAS. But you can also compete against a computer opponent. So what if you set yourself to level 20 and set the computer to level 1? There should be no way you can beat that. The opponent can clear those four viruses away pretty easily, no matter how fast you churn through yours.

Actually you can still win under these conditions in the NES version. http://de.nicovideo.jp/watch/1233106957 (sorry, I cannot provide log-in data this time)

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Posted: 10/10/2009 2:34 PM

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arflech

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lol did someone mess with the data you had given? Anyway it is sad that most of the userbase here will need to slog through the German or Spanish versions of the site just to register an account, but once that's done I prefer to use the original Japanese version just fyi

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Posted: 10/11/2009 12:07 PM

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Patashu

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Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4017

Shmups are trivial to TAS, but there's a shump bullet pattern emulator called YGS2000 which has a 'level' parameter, which scales almost every pattern up to ludicrous levels. (Some produce more interesting results than others.)

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Posted: 10/23/2009 9:43 PM

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DaTeL237

Active player (354)

Joined: 1/16/2008
Posts: 358
Location: The Netherlands

I scanned through a review of 'The Path' this week.... seemed like that game would be useless to TAS from what i understand, the fastest way to complete the game is what most players will do the very first time.... follow 'the path' as little red riding hood, arrive at grandma's house and that's it, game over and the player is informed that maybe the game would be more fun if he goes off the path

wikipedia wrote:

In this game, there are no requirements but the ending at Grandmother's house does change dramatically after the wolf encounter.

TASes: [URL=http://tasvideos.org/Movies-298up-Obs.html]Mr. Nutz (SNES), Young Merlin 100% (SNES), Animaniacs 100% (SNES)[/URL]

Posted: 1/30/2010 10:54 PM

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Potato_Stomper

Joined: 7/29/2009
Posts: 55

Proving or disproving that there is a cardinality between between these of the countable and uncountable sets using Mario Paint as a chalkboard to write down the proof.

Posted: 1/31/2010 5:24 AM

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Heisanevilgenius

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Joined: 3/22/2006
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I like your style.

Posted: 2/3/2010 11:09 PM

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Ramzi

Joined: 3/25/2004
Posts: 459

Someone could easily create a game that requires an exact set of keypresses in order to win. And then encrypt the ROM so that that keypress set cannot be reverse engineered.

Posted: 2/4/2010 5:44 AM

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Heisanevilgenius

Active player (405)

Joined: 3/22/2006
Posts: 708

That sounds completely pointless.

Posted: 2/19/2010 6:41 PM

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subanark

Joined: 2/8/2006
Posts: 60

I think Crazy Taxi is a perfect example of this. Is it possible to pick up every passenger in a standard game? In the game you get X amount of starting time. Every passenger you pick up gives you more time based on how far they want to go, with a bonus 5 seconds if you drop them off quick enough. The more passengers you pick up, the less bonus time you get. However, with being able to break normal max speed limitation you can bottom out on bonus extra time and still stay afloat, but as more and more passengers are picked up, fewer are available in less optimal locations.

Posted: 3/9/2010 10:06 PM

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DarkKobold

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Joined: 11/15/2004
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While it probably wouldn't make for an entertaining TAS, Donkey Kong's 'killscreen' is impossible to TAS.

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Posted: 4/7/2010 10:50 PM

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zaphod77

Joined: 1/13/2007
Posts: 335

No, no, no. The idea is to use a TAS to accomplish what's not supposed to be even possible to accomplish. To accomplish a goal that is impossible under normal conditions, and very difficult (but still possible) when TASing. Many Super Mario Hacks are designed to be hard even with savestates and slow mo. These do not count.