Post subject: Oh, by the way...
Synahel
She/Her
Joined: 1/19/2011
Posts: 259
Location: France
... I haven't even properly introduced myself. So here I am, 26 yo french old school player, been watching tasvideos for ages, but never really had enough will to make one nor register here and lurk on the forums. Still, I managed to make (at lest, damn it) a TAS last month, and I'm counting on making more and more. I think I've watched around 90% of the published TAS on the site. I'm that crazy. Especially for watching TAS of games I've never played. TAS really fascinates me, and I can spend, and actually spend in fact, countless hours watching feats beyond suspicion. Thanks to the community (especially #tasvideos) which provided me a lot of help, I'm not feared anymore. Yet I initially wanted to TAS a lot of SMS games (childhood memory, incredible experience with these games, etc), I'm already planning some things. Anyway, thanks everyone for the help you provided and still provides, for helping the noob I am anytime I ask stupid questions.
Post subject: Re: Oh, by the way...
Active player, Editor (296)
Joined: 3/8/2004
Posts: 7468
Location: Arzareth
Hi! I might as well introduce myself too. I'm a 30-something Finnish guy who's been following tasvideos since its very beginning (in fact, before anyone else even knew it existed). At first I was quite hesitant to register here, considering that the forums did not even exist, but after some convincing by regulars I had to set up the forums. I have created a few TASes myself, but I like it better to get others to do them. After all, it turned out that most people are better at it than I am, and the hassle of competing is not something I particularly enjoy doing, because although ideologically I only care about the end result no matter who does it, psychologically it is a fact (at least for me) that once you create something, you have put yourself into it; some pride is inevitably attached to it (you're proud of what you have created), and it hurts having it being made abandonable by someone else. Whether it happens for valid reasons (tricks you missed or optimizations someone else does better), or for invalid reasons (your cool arts gets replaced with bleh arts), it hurts, although differently. For a non-competitive person like me, the position of coaching works better, which is why since the beginning of the site I assumed the role of making documentation about everything TAS (aside from the auxiliary unavoidable tasks of creating technical bits like the site's code itself). The concept of TAS fascinates me too; there is something to be said achieving absolute control over accomplishing whatever one sets up to do; in being able to fix all one's mistakes before anyone even gets a chance to see them. At times, I really wish the real life worked that way, too. To be able to control one's every muscle at perfect deliberation, choreographing them to achieve something that looks most definitely impossible. And in the process, discovering a secret aspect or two about the universe's physics; physics, that we have learned to make so many assumptions about. At one point of time, TASVideos was, no lying about it, the biggest thing that dominated my free time. Lately, I had a switch of priorities, and I had to give TASVideos to other capable hands. Although it did not go as smoothly as I hoped, in retrospect I am satisfied to see that once again I was proven to be not indispensable; I had successfully changed the site to not depend on me. In other words, the child left the nest (after a period of decreasingly subtle persuasion), and did not die in the wilderness, but rather, is doing quite well. Though there are people who might see it differently. I still lurk at the background at times, though once in a while I also take the liberty of disappearing entirely, which is also fine. Oh, and rather than post in TASVideos's off-topic forum about programming stuff I post that in Youtube todays.
Synahel
She/Her
Joined: 1/19/2011
Posts: 259
Location: France
I remember when your nickname was in the url we typed to get to this website (if I'm not mistaken, now sounds like eons ago). There's a quote from you which I really love, when commenting Chrono Trigger's amazing glitched TAS: "Who needs strategy when you can just blast yourself through the wafers of the universe?" That sums up TASing: Go beyond. Technology provides us ways to go beyond what and why the video game was conceived, all is needed is someone to take this step beyond, to break these barriers. The most important point to me is the finality of all this: pure beauty and entertainment. That's not about getting a better society or solving world's problems, but still, it creates, in its way, a better world, where someone, in his own way, in his own defined entertainment universe, has gone beyond. And offered 1° an entertainment to anyone who can watch a run 2° ways, tricks, and research on how to go beyond. Yes, these games are closed universes with their own physics, deliberately, but still, the idea is there, the will to go beyond, to not only get better and better each time, but also to break the improbable barriers. All this may sound rubbish or onanism (saying it politely eh!), but still, that's really how I feel about the concept of TAS. But I suppose these topics have already been subject to many discussions, eh.