Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4739
Location: Tennessee
Based on feedback and analyzing all the categories I've come up with this proposed list of changes. Discuss.
Keep
Playaround
Aims for maximum score
Contains speed/entertainment tradeoffs
Aims for ingame time instead of real-time
Is a demonstration (not: not for playarounds, for 1-track runs, bigame, etc
Kills: 100%
Best ending
Two games in one movie
Three games in one movie
Four games in one movie
2 Players
3 Players
4 Players
1 Player in multi-player game (for 1-player runs where 1-player is slower)
Uses warps
Uses a game restart sequence
All genres
Rename
Items: 100% - 100% Completion
Collects no items - Low% completion
Plays using suboptimal character - Uses suboptimal character
Uses death as a shortcut - Uses death to save time (the word shortcut isn't always correct with time saving death)
No death - Forgoes time-saving death
Uses no warps - Forgoes warps
Abuses programming errors in the game - Heavy glitch abuse (lots of games will need this tag removed)
Does not abuse programming errors in the game - Forgoes time-saving glitches
Technique: Corrupts save data - Corrupts save data (word technique seems pointless)
No save data corruption - Forgoes save data corruption
Manipulates luck - Heavy luck manipulation (then remove the tag from a lot of movies)
Does not use a restart sequence - forgoes a time saving restart sequence
Single level only - Single level demonstration
Second quest - Second Quest/Post game completion (adding post game completion to make it more compatible with other runs that start at a point that game completion is normally required).
Starts from a predefined save - Starts from a saved state or SRAM
Remove
Walkathon (only 1 run uses it, Is a demonstration should be used)
All levels&secrets - obsolete, 100% will suffice
Teddy survives (sorry, this is just too pointless as funny as it is)
Ignores delays caused by bonus effects
No predefined saves
Uses no passwords
Add
Pacifist
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
adelikat wrote:
No death - forgoes time saving death
Uses no warps - forgoes warps
Make sure you use hyphens properly. "Forgoes time saving death" is ambiguous, and at first read, sounded like "Forgoes time, saving death" which almost meant something very strange. Use "Forgoes time-saving deaths" for disambiguation. Also note the "s" added for consistency.
Also, make sure your capitalization is consistent. These ones didn't have a capital at the beginning.
adelikat wrote:
Starts from a predefined save - Starts from savestate or SRAM
Joined: 11/22/2004
Posts: 1468
Location: Rotterdam, The Netherlands
It seems kind of strange me that a run could potentially have both of these:
- Is a demonstration
- Single level demonstration
Maybe the latter should be renamed to "Plays single level"?
Also, maybe "Pacifist" should be renamed to "No unnecessary kills" for clarity. (I know Pacifist itself is an old speedrunning term but it's not really too clear.)
Finally, how many "n-in-one" movies do we have? Might be worth combining "two games in one", "three games in one" etc into "Multiple games in one".
This wording was used to make it compatible with "Items: 100%". Rename to "100% kills" or "Maximum kills" (which is better because in some cases 100% is unreachable while "maximum" suffices; e.g. Gradius 3).
adelikat wrote:
Two games in one movie
Three games in one movie
Four games in one movie
These will never enter mass production. Combine.
adelikat wrote:
2 Players
3 Players
4 Players
Something tells me these should be combined as well for the reason stated above (this is at least true for 3- and 4-player movies), not completely sure how exactly.
adelikat wrote:
1 Player in multi-player game (for 1-player runs where 1-player is slower)
Remove hyphen, "multiplayer" is an established spelling.
adelikat wrote:
Uses warps
Uses a game restart sequence
Why did you decide to keep these?
adelikat wrote:
All genres
Why did you keep simulation?
adelikat wrote:
Does not use a restart sequence - forgoes a time saving restart sequence
Add hyphen.
adelikat wrote:
Single level only - Single level demonstration
Why do we need this if we have "Is a demonstration"? Also, why is it "Is a" and not just "Demonstration"?
adelikat wrote:
Second quest - Second Quest/Post game completion
"Post-game" needs a hyphen.
adelikat wrote:
Teddy survives (sorry, this is just too pointless as funny as it is)
Ok, now you have one more mortal enemy.
Useful suggestion: note how we can get some info if we hover mouse cursor over part of the movie title (ROM name, movie number). Can we add category descriptions the same way? Provided we write them all.
Another way to do this would be the following approach:
1) make a separate article where each category is explained in detail, with a table of contents to allow precise term linking;
2) add a small after each category tag in movie publications, automatically linking it to its definition on the page.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
We need more descriptive tags like:
Colors a dinosaur
Record elephant
SMW Syndrome
ADHD
etc.
And you won't define "heavy"?
EDIT:
After editing a few movie tags, I figured out that the "Heavy glitch abuse" tag should be reset for all movies in one shot so that movies editors can tag 5% of the published movies rather than untag 90% of them.
<klmz> it reminds me of that people used to keep quoting adelikat's IRC statements in the old good days
<adelikat> no doubt
<adelikat> klmz, they still do
After editing a few movie tags, I figured out that the "Heavy glitch abuse" tag should be reset for all movies in one shot so that movies editors can tag 5% of the published movies rather than untag 90% of them.
That's a good idea. Likewise with heavy luck manipulation.
Also, if any of you are going to edit tags in movies, please do it in batches by movie publication numbers (1–100, etc.), and announce the range you have edited. This way we will be able to know which ones don't need editing. It will save both time and effort.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Also, if any of you are going to edit tags in movies, please do it in batches by movie publication numbers (1–100, etc.), and announce the range you have edited. This way we will be able to know which ones don't need editing. It will save both time and effort.
Absolutely not, for two reasons:
1) publication numbers are static, system listings aren't;
2) if anything, it's not easier to track one's progress if they suddenly stopped tagging, say, NES movies at an arbitrary point.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
Almost forgot to mention this here:
After some discussion on IRC, I've started a tracking page to help us assign blocks of movies to recategorise to editors that want to help out with the project.
If you want to claim a block, go right ahead...
Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere
I like how one of my publications, which employed major game skipping glitches and a lot of luck manipulation did not have any of those tags, whereas my other publication, which manipulated luck once, and employed only invisible glitches had both of them.
I know it's still being worked on and such, but I found this amusing nonetheless.
"Forgoes time-saving damage"
This one I don't really get. Is there any reason for a run to avoid taking damage when taking damage would make the run faster?
As for games where taking damage does not help completing the game faster, "forgoes time-saving damage" does not mean that (and that kind of game wouldn't need a category tag anyways).
Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind
I was about to point to nitsuja's S3&K runs before other people came along for non-use of the Hydrocity 2 glitch - then I remembered that that was a time-saving death, not time-saving damage.
I suppose there are certain games where a no-damage run would be considered more entertaining, but I can't think of any examples to that effect.
"Forgoes time-saving damage"
This one I don't really get. Is there any reason for a run to avoid taking damage when taking damage would make the run faster?
Because only taking damage once or twice in an entire run when you breeze through every other section without so much as getting a scratch looks out of place?
Is there any reason for a run to avoid taking damage when taking damage would make the run faster?
Sometimes it impairs entertainment value for a significant amount of vocal viewers. For instance, when avoiding damage constitutes a much more difficult/impressive goal.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Sometimes it impairs entertainment value for a significant amount of vocal viewers. For instance, when avoiding damage constitutes a much more difficult/impressive goal.
I suppose this means (or should mean) that there should always be a very good reason for a run to not to take damage even though taking it would save time, and thus granting this tag is rare?
I suppose this means (or should mean) that there should always be a very good reason for a run to not to take damage even though taking it would save time, and thus granting this tag is rare?
So your opinion would suggest that taking damage should be the preferred option, as opposed to avoiding taking damage because it's a one off and looks "unclean" in comparison to the rest of the run?
Typically TASers are using every tool at their disposal to get faster times. So the potential of taking damage should be the default option, yes. Sometimes taking damage is slower (e.g. because of lengthy recoil animations), but then it's not that the TASer wanted a cleaner-looking run, but rather that taking damage just doesn't help.
I think there are a couple of runs on the site where taking damage is almost never useful, and in the situations where it could be used it only saved trivial amounts of time, so the TASer decided to forgo it. But do we actually have any runs currently on the site that go out of their way to avoid taking damage throughout when it would be useful?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
Joined: 4/20/2005
Posts: 2160
Location: Norrköping, Sweden
You're all probably well aware of this, but I thought I should tell you just in case: a lot of movies have the tag "N/A" now for some reason (see the NES movies for example). I'm guessing it should be possible to write a script that simply removes this tag from the movies that has it.
after each category tag in movie publications, automatically linking it to its definition on the page.
