Hello guyz, Im getting used to see TAS technics ,however, on TASes I never saw anyone running out of life and going into continue screen to make it save time, it kinda worked for x2poet's metal slug X run... but feeling dying so much to the point to go to a continue screen seem a bit diferent but worked well on this run to save time, maybe then it should be added as a new objective since it may work in a few games?
Not that I feel bothered by all that but when I was watching TAS from begining people always should avoid deaths or damage to make the run kinda pure, but then they decided to take deaths and damage to save time and make it faster, now using continues to save time seem a new way to save time as well.
My main objective here is to TAS the most obscure games titles!
The topic of using death (or even damage) as a shortcut is an interesting one, as it affects the style of the run. The issue boils down to the fact that TASes have two almost contradictory goals:
1) Flawless, perfect, "god-like" playing that "pwns" the game with perfect superhuman skills, with no human defects, errors, mistakes nor sloppy playing.
2) Completing the game at superhuman speed, with a completion time that is basically impossible for a mere mortal to achieve in normal play.
These two basic goals become contradictory when damage or death can be used to make the run faster, at least depending on one's definition of "flawless" and "perfect" playing. One can define those terms to mean that if you get damage or die, that's a sign of sloppy playing. (Of course in the case of a TAS it's intentional, but to the viewer it might look like imperfect playing. After all, "perfection" can be understood as getting no damage whatsoever, much less dying.)
While we do have the "Forgoes time-saving death" and "Forgoes time-saving damage" categories for this precise reason (ie. to allow authors to avoid damage/death as a stylistic choice), the general consensus is, nevertheless, that normally damage/death is a completely acceptable and valid technique if it saves time, and not seen as "sloppy playing". (The only case where it is seen as such is when it doesn't save time, in which case it should generally be avoided as completely unnecessary.)
While in some games getting hurt or dying decreases your power ups, in a game such as Metal Slug, dying refills your bombs. If the TASer is not limited to use only one or two credits, he can potentially die an infinite amount of times to refill his bombs and make boss battles faster. Of course you lose the special weapon if you have one and you are stuck with the basic gun, but maybe some boss fights could be faster with more bombs. And the same probably applies to other games where dying refills your bombs. In Aero Fighters likewise you lose your extended weapon but you get new bombs; and if you continue you usually get a weapon upgrade for free.
Tradeoffs should be evaluated carefully but in general I am all for death if it saves time. And I like flawless runs as well. Having two categories is good.
Dying and using continues are completely different. Lives are a finite resource; continues aren't — they have initially been conceived as a means to get more money from less capable players, or those still learning the game, so making them finite would be counterproductive. Using continues is the same as getting a game over (literally: continuing past the game over) and as such it invalidates all achievements past that point. To make this more noticeable, score counters in the vast majority of games increment the last digit every time a continue has been used.
You could play any arcade game "perfectly" by getting a game over at the start, receiving a max powerup immediately, and cruising through the rest of the game on bombs or whatnot by continuing when you run out of them. It's called credit-feeding, and there is a good reason something like that isn't happening in competitive play.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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Noob Irdoh wrote:
While in some games getting hurt or dying decreases your power ups, in a game such as Metal Slug, dying refills your bombs. If the TASer is not limited to use only one or two credits, he can potentially die an infinite amount of times to refill his bombs and make boss battles faster. Of course you lose the special weapon if you have one and you are stuck with the basic gun, but maybe some boss fights could be faster with more bombs. And the same probably applies to other games where dying refills your bombs. In Aero Fighters likewise you lose your extended weapon but you get new bombs; and if you continue you usually get a weapon upgrade for free.
Tradeoffs should be evaluated carefully but in general I am all for death if it saves time. And I like flawless runs as well. Having two categories is good.
True, and a disturbing thought. We need to reTAS some of these games now!
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Mmm, from what I remember of the current Metal Slug X TAS, running out of bombs is not a significant issue. The delay imposed by respawning and losing your weapon would be much more significant -- most of the fights are done with a flamethrower or shotgun, which I'm pretty sure have more per-shot power than grenades do.
Stylistically, I think that the Metal Slug X continues were a poor choice. They may have been faster but they didn't look as good, especially since otherwise the run was "flawless". Of course, usually I'm of the opinion that using death looks bad unless it's being used to deathwarp, so I can't really claim to be impartial.
EDIT: having read Upthorn'sMoozooh's posts in the other thread, it sounds like his contention is that the player has lost the game as soon as they are forced to use a continue. By that premise the TAS doesn't beat the game since it "cheated" partway through, buying its way forwards. Of course, the obvious improvement for that issue would be to only die twice instead of three times, thereby not running out of lives. There's also some question as to if the same rules apply to non-arcade games as to arcade games. What about Blaster Master?
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
To make this more noticeable, score counters in the vast majority of games increment the last digit every time a continue has been used.
"Vast majority"? I had never even heard of this practice until you mentioned it. The closest thing I've seen to that is the -99 point "Cheap Shot" bonus from Smash Brothers, but that game's actual Continue after Game Over halves the score. I thought most other games simply zeroed the score after a Continue.
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
"Vast majority"? I had never even heard of this practice until you mentioned it. The closest thing I've seen to that is the -99 point "Cheap Shot" bonus from Smash Brothers, but that game's actual Continue after Game Over halves the score. I thought most other games simply zeroed the score after a Continue.
Try basically any arcade game released in the last 30 years. Most of them also reset the score but leave the last digit at 1 when you continue, and keep incrementing it until 9. Don't worry, I never noticed it until a couple years ago, either.
This practice isn't as mainstream in console games, especially more recent ones that aren't arcade ports, mainly because the concept of credits/coins there is virtual; you don't literally buy yourself a chance to continue with real money, you just take it for free.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
But what MooZooH objected to in the Metal Slug thing wasn't the kind of continue you get for free, that's just taking advantage of a game's inherent graciousness, but the kind of continue that's a reward for feeding more money into an arcade cabinet. I think the number of credits an arcade TAS is allowed to use is something that should have been discussed and decided on as a rule before arcade submission was approved, but oh well, I guess no one thought about it. That's also why I'm a little on the fence about AtMa's idea to use GBA slot bonuses in MegaMan Battle Network 5 DS, where you're just being awarded easy power for buying a certain other game, or even for buying a port of a game you already own!
put yourself in my rocketpack if that poochie is one outrageous dude
I think the number of credits an arcade TAS is allowed to use is something that should have been discussed and decided on as a rule before arcade submission was approved, but oh well, I guess no one thought about it.
Indeed, that is the case, and I agree it should have been discussed beforehand prior to subjecting x2poet to such a situation.
In my opinion, using continues is similar to using cheat codes or passwords: they both rely on receiving "free" benefits that speed up the game completion, cheapening it in the process as the gameplay rules are circumvented completely. Perhaps this calls for a definition of beating the game for cases like this, because getting to a gameover screen to buy yourself out of it hardly qualifies as "beating" in my eyes. Rather, it's getting the game to beat you faster so that you could receive an insurance payout and trip on analgesics as a free bonus.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Number of credits allowed is especially a concern for the 4-player Captain America and the Avengers arcade game, because you can buy extra vitality with credits instead of waiting until you die and have to continue.
In general, number of credits is a concern for any game where adding credits extends a play timer that can also be extended by taking actions in-game (e.g. Gauntlet). There, extra credits would allow you to save time by not having to detour to pick up health to keep the timer from running out, but that could easily lend itself to simply ignoring all damage sources since you can buy them out without any time sacrifice.
Not that I'd expect a Gauntlet TAS to be submitted here since the game's endless, but Magic Sword operates on similar principles and does have an end. I'm not certain in that case if you can die just from not adding money for long enough, but I'm pretty sure you can get your health low enough to have the low-health beep going continuously, which would itself be pretty poor entertainment-wise.
Pyrel - an open-source rewrite of the Angband roguelike game in Python.
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a TAS represent some super human with perfect reflexes and perfect clairvoyance. As the perfect gamer he would logically also have unlimited monetary funds that would aid in his quest for fast completions. Abusing these systems is just another form of abuse a player could employ.
Haha, while I like the analogy, credit-feeding is ostracized not because of the money involved (hell, arcades are dead anyway), but because it's a way to weasel past the game over screen and pretend nothing happened. Last I checked, a speedrun was supposed to complete the game without getting a game over, because there's definitely nothing superhuman in continuing every time you want to beef yourself up.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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All the warp glitch Rygar runs employ death to skip massive parts of the game. Rygar only has 1 life, thus there is a big fat game over screen in all those movies.
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moozooh wrote:
Last I checked, a speedrun was supposed to complete the game without getting a game over, because there's definitely nothing superhuman in continuing every time you want to beef yourself up.
Last I checked, a speedrun was supposed to complete the game as fast as possible, disregarding negative side factors such as taking damage, deaths and game overs if using them allows the game to be completed faster.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
All the warp glitch Rygar runs employ death to skip massive parts of the game. Rygar only has 1 life, thus there is a big fat game over screen in all those movies.
I didn't actually know about that. Pretty bummed if that's how it is. :\
Mothrayas wrote:
Last I checked, a speedrun was supposed to complete the game as fast as possible, disregarding negative side factors such as taking damage, deaths and game overs if using them allows the game to be completed faster.
Why are we not using cheats again? Surely they would have made things faster?..
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4083
Location: The Netherlands
moozooh wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
Last I checked, a speedrun was supposed to complete the game as fast as possible, disregarding negative side factors such as taking damage, deaths and game overs if using them allows the game to be completed faster.
Why are we not using cheats again? Surely they would have made things faster?..
If you're talking about external cheats, those are modifications outside of the game and the point of a speedrun is to complete the game as it is, not modified.
If you're talking about ingame cheats (e.g. Konami code, passwords), they're mostly not used for entertainment factors. (There isn't really a solid rule on this, as there are TASes on the site that use passwords). Viewers of a speedrun don't want to see the speedrunner beating 90% of the game just by inputting a simple password.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa
<dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects.
<Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits
<adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
Last I checked, a speedrun was supposed to complete the game as fast as possible, disregarding negative side factors such as taking damage, deaths and game overs if using them allows the game to be completed faster.
Why are we not using cheats again? Surely they would have made things faster?..
If you're talking about external cheats, those are modifications outside of the game and the point of a speedrun is to complete the game as it is, not modified.
If you're talking about ingame cheats (e.g. Konami code, passwords), they're mostly not used for entertainment factors. (There isn't really a solid rule on this, as there are TASes on the site that use passwords). Viewers of a speedrun don't want to see the speedrunner beating 90% of the game just by inputting a simple password.
Well, I'm planning do Aero Fighters (SNES), I checked already all characters shot and subshots strengts, but the strongest ones are Rabio and Lepus which are secret and can be only be acessed by a code, this keeps bothering me because if I use them i can make the speedrun slight faster than using normal characters, but the fact its a cheat may make the tas look cheap or bad because of using such way but its help to save time , so, can I use them as a method to save some time even if it maybe go a bit againt the rules?
My main objective here is to TAS the most obscure games titles!
Mothrayas, the way you're presenting your argument is not consistent. First a speedrun is supposed to be faster at all costs, then it turns out there are entertainment factors involved that make them by far not as fast as they could have theoretically been. So some cheats are thus allowed and others, that provide the same effects, don't, exactly why?
Mothrayas wrote:
If you're talking about ingame cheats (e.g. Konami code, passwords), they're mostly not used for entertainment factors. (There isn't really a solid rule on this, as there are TASes on the site that use passwords).
There are no TASes on the site that use passwords that provide the player with additional benefits. Only those that put them under even greater handicap, or access stages either otherwise inaccessible, or requiring to loop the game once (again, for a greater handicap).
Then again, why are there no TASes that use infinite live/ammo/weaponry cheats in runs restricted by some of those (i.e, Contra series)?
Mothrayas wrote:
Viewers of a speedrun don't want to see the speedrunner beating 90% of the game just by inputting a simple password.
I'd actually very much like you to provide me with a layman-side explanation of the difference between skipping 90% of the game by the means of a glitch or a clever trick, and skipping 90% of the game by the means of a password, considering both are key input that get the game to behave in a certain way for the purpose of speed.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
Well, I'm planning do Aero Fighters (SNES), I checked already all characters shot and subshots strengts, but the strongest ones are Rabio and Lepus which are secret and can be only be acessed by a code, this keeps bothering me because if I use them i can make the speedrun slight faster than using normal characters, but the fact its a cheat may make the tas look cheap or bad because of using such way but its help to save time , so, can I use them as a method to save some time even if it maybe go a bit againt the rules?
This is probably one of those borderline cases. Is the password something you learn somewhere inside the game? If it is not learned inside the game, you probably don't want to use it. If it is learned inside the game (for example after beating the game once), there could probably be an argument to use it.
You sort of have to gauge how the movie will be with or without those characters. If it is essentially the same gameplay but slightly faster, there is probably only room for one category on the site with or without.
If the characters are stronger, do they make the game easier? If they make the game easier, you should probably not use them. As a parallel, sometimes games are not played on hard mode because all hard mode does is increase boss health. Watching characters fight bosses for set periods of time can be boring. If the password characters in your game save boring repetitive boss time, that can be an argument to use them.
There is no strict ruling on this, but you want to justify the choice before starting the run. It is more about producing the best category to watch than saving 20 seconds with a faster unlockable character.
Consider this movie for reference: http://tasvideos.org/802M.html
