Offtopic: Somebody should run King's Bounty unassisted!

I like this suggestion! The difference between Myst DS assisted and unassisted would be under a minute. With King's Bounty... we're probably looking at, perhaps, fifty times longer for a non-TAS?

Since this thread seems to be destined to be revived at some point, I'd like to ask this of the people who found this entertaining: Did you also like Wario Ware, Inc.: Mega Microgame$!? It is a game that has a similar concept, with timed events and tool assisted play being very similar to unassisted play. If the Myst DS run happens to be revisited sometime in the future, why shouldn't the WarioWare run be re-examined as well, despite the very low percentage of people finding it entertaining?

That one actually was my favorite Gruefood when alden was starting his Gruefood Delight page. :P

Yeah that was pretty good too. But I don't think it's fair to compare it to Myst. In fact it's rather opposite: Wario Ware for the most part is forced to be a specific length of time. Whereas in Myst you can skip most of the game. True, skipping the game is trivial for non-assisted runs as well. However, I watched the sda run and it looks very different. You can tell it's a human. This run is executed "perfectly" and has a clever fireplace code entry to boot. Sorry for running my mouth about this again after pretending to give up :\

so we have the Vault And I would like to put in some kind of clause that suggests a minimum amount of "TAS skill" if the wording can be clear enough (I want to minimize subjectiveness for this tier). So should there be a minimum clause? And should we draw the line below or above this submission? Discuss!

so we have the Vault And I would like to put in some kind of clause that suggests a minimum amount of "TAS skill" if the wording can be clear enough (I want to minimize subjectiveness for this tier). So should there be a minimum clause? And should we draw the line below or above this submission? Discuss!

But if there's a minimum amount of TAS skills needed, wouldn't that mean alot of atari runs be rejected? Since TASing most atari games is very simple.

As this has been unrejected, I'd like to explain the category of this run. In Myst, the aim of the game is to complete and use linking books. There are several such books in the game, but three are particularly tied to the plot: Sirrus's, Achenar's, and Atrus's. Sirrus's and Achenar's books start missing five pages each, whereas Atrus's is missing only one. At the start of the game, the pages in Sirrus's and Achenar's books are hard to access (you get one of each in each of the four main levels), whereas the missing page for Atrus's book is in the hub world (and thus easy to access), but hidden behind a specific sequence of actions (that is intended to be determined via clues in two of the main levels, rather than known at the start of the game). These actions are always the same, and can be performed regardless of whether the character knows what they are or not. As such, this TAS skips all the levels of the game but the hub world, and starts off by just getting the missing page in Atrus's book. The game also requires you to find the linking books before you can add pages to them. Sirrus's and Achenar's books are trivial to find, but Atrus's (and one of the pages for Sirrus's and for Achenar's books) are hidden behind a combination lock (that's the lock that the TAS takes so long entering). When four of the five pages are added to Sirrus's or Achenar's books, they tell you how to determine the combination. However, the combination is also always the same, and can be entered even if the character doesn't know what it is, so the TAS, after obtaining Atrus's page, just skips directly to obtaining Atrus's book. Finally, you get the best ending for completing and using Atrus's book, and bad endings for merely completing Sirrus's or Achenar's books, or using Atrus's book before it's complete. (The bad endings aren't considered wins by most Myst players, but rather nonstandard game overs.) As such, the TAS only needs to fetch Atrus's book and the missing page for it, and it completes the game with the best ending. A 100% run would retrieve or locate all 11 missing pages, but would only use 9 of them (4 for Sirrus's book, 4 for Achenar's book, and 1 for Atrus's book that's used in a cutscene after losing control). (The last two pages cannot be used because that would lead to a bad ending.) This submitted run is any%, best ending (in fact, it's a low% for the best ending, with a somewhat major sequence break due to the use of codes that have not been revealed in-game). An any%, bad ending run would be somewhat faster if it aimed for Atrus's bad ending (as it would be the same without obtaining Atrus's page); it would be considerably slower if it aimed for Achenar's or Sirrus's bad endings, as that would require completing most of the game to gather the pages. A 100% would be longer still, due to needing to get both of those sets of pages; it would also be quite repetitive, because doing so requires moderately large amounts of backtracking / repeating areas. The most entertaining category for the game would definitely involve fetching four pages for at least one of Achenar's and Sirrus's books, which is meant to be required in order to locate Atrus's. You could argue for an "unspoiled" category, where the character does not use information that they haven't learned ingame, to enforce this, but that's a bit of a stretch and hard to judge objectively. Merely doing everything with Atrus's book, though, causes the TAS to not actually visit any of the levels, as everything required is in the hub world.

Sure, adventure games are pretty cool. This could go in the vault quite nicely.

I feel this is definitely one for the vault. Mr. Kelly R. Flewin

this one should be vaulted, it looks like any other dungeon crawlers who got thru before

Vault.

Sure, adventure games are pretty cool. This could go in the vault quite nicely.

I agree. It's a whole genre that we've mostly overlooked so far.

Strongly disagree with "TAS skill" condition on Vault games. I am interested in how quickly games can be completed, not how hard it is to TAS games well. It's neat that some games are very tricky to TAS and that we have skilled TASers who rise to the challenge. Of course that is great. But not every game demands that level of dedication; some may even have "obvious" perfect solutions that render the author irrelevant. But that's fine! I still want to see what the game looks like when played perfectly. So I obviously think this belongs in the Vault.

I'd be willing to accept this. However, I'd like some discussion regarding multiple endings in general (good, bad, whatever). One of the bad endings involves using Atrus's book but without the missing page. I assume this is faster. The question I wonder is: Under what conditions should bad endings not be allowed (for publication under vault)? Should bad endings not be allowed for any reason? Or is there a reason why a bad ending could be allowed under some circumstances?

as i think that "good endings" should be prefered as they really "complete" the game, bad endings could be alowed when it may change the gameplay radically, the abe's oddyssee is a good exemple as how the gameplay is changed by the ending. another expemple is wario 2 where there is no "bad" ending but multiple ending branchement, we did publish the shortest ending and the 100 % one. there is also knuckle chaotics where the only published run is the bad ending... the fun thing with the vault is that the problem is inversed : the good endings become sub optimals compared to bad endings if they don't enter the 100% completion categorie....

as i think that "good endings" should be prefered as they really "complete" the game, bad endings could be alowed when it may change the gameplay radically, the abe's oddyssee is a good exemple as how the gameplay is changed by the ending. another expemple is wario 2 where there is no "bad" ending but multiple ending branchement, we did publish the shortest ending and the 100 % one. there is also knuckle chaotics where the only published run is the bad ending... the fun thing with the vault is that the problem is inversed : the good endings become sub optimals compared to bad endings if they don't enter the 100% completion categorie....

But why waste time getting the good ending if its for the vault?

The problem with Myst is that it doesn't clearly distinguish between wins and losses, and also sort-of assumes you haven't played the game before and don't have access to GameFAQs. If you look at the sequel (Riven), the game has two major puzzles, and you can get several unambiguously bad endings (ending in the character's death in some cases) via only completing one of them. People don't consider this to be a win, which is not particularly surprising. You can also get some ambiguously bad endings, and there is an obvious best ending. Myst is similar. The ending obtained in the run, the best ending, is the second-fastest. The bad ending involving using Atrus's book without the last page is the fastest, and finishes off with Atrus ranting at you for what an idiot you are. Most people don't consider this ending a win, but the game itself doesn't really distinguish. And if you're basing endings on difficulty, the bad endings with Sirrus's or Achenar's books are way harder to obtain than the bad ending with Atrus's (if you know the password in advance, anyway). The "obvious" fix is to do a 100% of the game; when doing a 100%, the best ending is slightly faster than the available bad endings at that point. So the issue wouldn't come up in that case. (A 100% of Myst is somewhat tedious, btw, so may well end up in the vault.)

I'm not entirely sure anymore if the bad ending for this game (using Atrus's book without the missing page) is faster, since it appears that cutscenes cannot be skipped in the DS version, and that the cutscene is longer without the missing page. I still have in mind a few scenarios for games in general though: - Three minutes into a game, the player presses the cop out button and the game ends. Clearly bad ending. (This is the Metal Max bad ending submission) - The player plays all the way to the final boss. Before fighting the boss, the player makes the choice to switch to the dark side, and the game ends. Clearly bad ending. - The player makes a few different choices during gameplay which affect the ending. Choice A gives the good ending, choice B gives the bad ending. The player chooses choice B. No gameplay is lost as a result of this choice. We can argue that the first two above do not complete the game. The third case may take a while to clear up though. Note that at least one submission in the past has been obsoleted because it used a bad ending and the one that obsoleted it used a good ending even though it was slower.

Surely you can just end input before the cutscene plays? The game's over at that point. Or do you have to dismiss the cutscene once it's finished in this version in order to view the credits? It might be a bad precedent to say "let's time runs by fastest to credits for this game so that the best ending is also the any% ending".

Surely you can just end input before the cutscene plays?

I mean the cutscene/speech prior to entering the Atrus book. Though the endings are very different anyway (for the good ending, the game ends when you give the page to Atrus; for the bad ending, when you enter the book). There are no ending credits in this game.

If it wasn't for the cutscene before entering the book (and you still have to wait through another cutscene after that before you can give your final input) the run would be a lot faster. When I was TASing this, it felt like the second half or so was just waiting. The moment HourGlass gets mouse support, I think I'll redo this with cutscene skipping and possibly a 100%.

This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [2235] DS Myst by Scepheo in 01:07.16