Post by Slowking

Posted: 1/2/2010 9:04 AM

Post subject: What is "Heavy Luck Manipulation"?

Quote

trazz

Player (94)

Joined: 6/25/2005
Posts: 122

I'm going to delurk a bit again after noticing that my Golden Axe movie got the new "Heavy Luck Manipulation" tag. Things in that movie that feature luck manipulation: * Some extremely crude trial-and-error luck manipulation in most (but not all) of the bonus stages. * One thief in the Stage 7. And that's it on the luck manipulation front. Seriously. (Heck, other than the thieves, I'm 99% convinced that Golden Axe doesn't call the random number generator.) Oh, and whatever happened to the promising Golden Axe stage 1 video? Use that as a base, find somebody that actually understands luck manipulation (instead of more or less faking it like I did) to optimize the bonus stages and steal my GA star. Please!

Posted: 1/2/2010 9:06 AM

Quote

Flygon

Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria

I personally think the tag should not exist at all, it's pointless. I mean, movies generally manipulate luck if there is an RNG anyway, why categorize a movie based on if the game uses an RNG? That, and heavily is opinionated.

Posted: 1/2/2010 9:09 AM

Quote

andymac

Experienced player (617)

Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere

That happened to me as well. The movies have not finished converting to the new tag system, and by default, any game which had the "luck manipulation" tag now has the "heavy luck manipulation tag" unless someone has specifically changed it. 1400 movies have to be changed, so be patient.

Measure once. Cut twice.

Posted: 1/2/2010 9:11 AM

Quote

sgrunt

He/Him

Emulator Coder, Former player

Joined: 10/28/2007
Posts: 1360
Location: The dark horror in the back of your mind

What andymac said. Also, we have a page for tracking the new category meanings, and you can track how we're doing in re-tagging movies (help with that would be appreciated).

Posted: 1/2/2010 9:25 AM

Quote

andymac

Experienced player (617)

Joined: 11/30/2008
Posts: 650
Location: a little city in the middle of nowhere

Well actually, I can almost guarantee that the people changing the tags have not seen every movie they have re-tagged. Perhaps this thread can be used for corrections to the already re-tagged movies? Let me start it off. My European version Blaster Master (1410M) does not have the "heavy glitch abuse" tag. even though the whole game revolves around a wall ejection glitch.

Measure once. Cut twice.

Posted: 1/2/2010 9:29 AM

Quote

Flygon

Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria

andymac wrote:

Let me start it off. My European version Blaster Master (1410M) does not have the "heavy glitch abuse" tag. even though the whole game revolves around a wall ejection glitch.

Tags has been updated, Sir! I can't believe I forgot to tag that way.

Posted: 1/6/2010 12:19 PM

Quote

Warp

Banned User, Former player

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

Flygon wrote:

I personally think the tag should not exist at all, it's pointless. I mean, movies generally manipulate luck if there is an RNG anyway, why categorize a movie based on if the game uses an RNG?

I don't think it's pointless. It gives interesting information about a certain type of luck manipulation. For example, a run may be interesting if every killed enemy drops an object, even though in the actual game this happens very rarely. I think you are confusing "manipulates luck" (which as a generic concept is rather pointless because every time there's an RNG there is "luck manipulation) and "heavy luck manipulation", which is something else completely. The latter is a very narrow subset of the former, and that is what makes it interesting.

Posted: 1/6/2010 12:25 PM

Quote

Flygon

Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria

Warp wrote:

I think you are confusing "manipulates luck" (which as a generic concept is rather pointless because every time there's an RNG there is "luck manipulation) and "heavy luck manipulation", which is something else completely. The latter is a very narrow subset of the former, and that is what makes it interesting.

That's the problem, heavily manipulates luck is a very ambiguous and opinionated term. What is heavy to one person is a simple poke to another.

Posted: 1/6/2010 12:36 PM

Quote

Warp

Banned User, Former player

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

Flygon wrote:

That's the problem, heavily manipulates luck is a very ambiguous and opinionated term. What is heavy to one person is a simple poke to another.

You can say the exact same thing from most tags, and even about most publications (ie. whether they are publish-worthy or not). That's why we have the guidelines and the people who have expertise on the subject making the decisions on which run gets a tag and which doesn't.

Posted: 1/6/2010 12:37 PM

Quote

Flygon

Joined: 11/4/2007
Posts: 1772
Location: Australia, Victoria

I am incapable of giving a judgement of what if heavy luck manipulation or not, I admit it. That is why the tag frustrates me, I don't know how to use it.

Posted: 1/6/2010 9:19 PM

Quote

Pikachu

Former player

Joined: 4/17/2009
Posts: 88

can't see the point of "Takes damage to save time" tag, seeing as nearly every run takes damage in some form or another to save time

Posted: 1/6/2010 10:42 PM

Quote

DrJones

Joined: 4/3/2005
Posts: 575
Location: Spain

Ah, but taking damage doesn't always save time. The tag is also there for the people that don't enjoy to see a player taking damage in a superplay.

No.

Posted: 1/6/2010 10:46 PM

Quote

arukAdo

Experienced player (954)

Joined: 12/3/2008
Posts: 936
Location: Castle Keep

http://tasvideos.org/1419M.html < here you could save time by taking damage, overall, its way more impressive by the movie goals not to take damage (it was made with playaround spirit, so taking damage can save time, likely)

Tasvideos.org personal page

Posted: 1/7/2010 1:42 PM

Quote

Kuwaga

Joined: 10/20/2006
Posts: 1248

Maybe instead of a "heavy luck manipulation" tag a run could have a luck manipulation quotient or something like that. It would indicate how probable it is for the rng (if not manipulated) to spit out the numbers needed to make the run possible. That doesn't include random events that don't influence the run's time. It should, however, include luck manipulations for entertainment purposes. For games where it isn't understood how the rng works, this value would have to be approximated. The higher (or lower) that value and the shorter the movie, the more densely luck manipulated it is. Just a suggestion, as I don't see people ever agreeing on what constitutes "heavy luck manipulation". It would mean a lot of work, so my bet is that nobody will actually ever calculate these values. ;)

Posted: 1/7/2010 2:36 PM

Quote

True

Editor, Player (68)

Joined: 1/18/2008
Posts: 663

The whole tag system sucks, and this tag and related tags especially are bad.

true on twitch - lsnes windows builds 20230425 - the date this site is buried

Posted: 1/7/2010 8:55 PM

Quote

Warp

Banned User, Former player

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

AndyD wrote:

can't see the point of "Takes damage to save time" tag, seeing as nearly every run takes damage in some form or another to save time

I suppose that the idea is that normally one should aim to avoid taking damage because that can be seen as "sloppy" play (avoiding all damage is more impressive because it's very difficult to achieve when playing normally). However, an exception to this rule of thumb is applied when taking damage can be used to make the run faster. This is the case with many games, but there are also quite many other games where taking damage is not advantageous, so the tag distinguishes between the two. I think it's more of an informative tag than anything else.

Posted: 1/7/2010 10:07 PM

Quote

Derakon

Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960

Of course, any run here that took damage when it was not advantageous or entertaining to do so would get rejected...

Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.

Posted: 1/8/2010 1:21 AM

Quote

Patashu

He/Him

Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4016

Kuwaga wrote:

Maybe instead of a "heavy luck manipulation" tag a run could have a luck manipulation quotient or something like that. It would indicate how probable it is for the rng (if not manipulated) to spit out the numbers needed to make the run possible. That doesn't include random events that don't influence the run's time. It should, however, include luck manipulations for entertainment purposes. For games where it isn't understood how the rng works, this value would have to be approximated. The higher (or lower) that value and the shorter the movie, the more densely luck manipulated it is. Just a suggestion, as I don't see people ever agreeing on what constitutes "heavy luck manipulation". It would mean a lot of work, so my bet is that nobody will actually ever calculate these values. ;)

The problem is it's not just a function of how improbable the RNG's results are, but how muchg time would be lost if the RNG was not predictable. Like, let's say there's a manuver you can do that has a 1/10 chance of happening but saves a second to do so. A TAS would always take advantage of it but a real time runner might abstain if the drawbacks are too bad. You can think of it like this: If the RNG was related with a perfect RNG that wasn't altered by the state of the game, how much slower would a tool assisted run (entering input frame by frame with perfect knowledge of the game) be compared to the manipulatable, predictable RNG? Does that make sense?

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

Posted: 1/19/2010 12:08 AM

Quote

moozooh

Senior Moderator

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

Slowking wrote:

Still it might be nice to have a clearer definition on the "heavy". Is it heavy when there is luck manipulation that a real time run could never do and that saves a minute or is it just a run with a lot of luck manipulation in it?

More like the first one, or both.

Warp wrote:

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

Posted: 1/19/2010 3:46 AM

Quote

Patashu

He/Him

Joined: 10/2/2005
Posts: 4016

I'd define it as 'using probabilistic tricks that a real time single segment run could never possibly rely on to save substantial amounts of time'

My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu

Posted: 1/19/2010 3:52 AM

Quote

adelikat

He/Him

Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player (3598)

Joined: 11/3/2004
Posts: 4738
Location: Tennessee

I tend to look at it as more of the visual experience. That the run obviously relies on luck manipulation that a human in real time could never hope to achieve. This would be things like critical hits every attack, or a multitude of random item drops from enemies.

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

Posted: 1/19/2010 4:49 PM

Quote

Kuwaga

Joined: 10/20/2006
Posts: 1248

I still think calculating (or at least guessing) the probability of the run actually happening like that, leaving out unimportant events, is the way to a more objective solution.

Posted: 1/19/2010 4:58 PM

Quote

Derakon

Joined: 7/2/2007
Posts: 3960

Do we really need an objective solution, though? So much of the judging process is subjective, and rightfully so, that I don't think much is gained. It's a judgement call. That's why we call them judges.

Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.

Posted: 1/19/2010 5:58 PM

Quote

arukAdo

Experienced player (954)

Joined: 12/3/2008
Posts: 936
Location: Castle Keep

Having a calculation will mostly need to have more sublevels of luck manipulation, because you wont like result of 10000 to be on the same step than 100. I think adelikat gived a simple and accurate definition.

Tasvideos.org personal page