Joined: 3/18/2006
Posts: 971
Location: Great Britain
Rules wrote:
Your movie should begin from the console power-on and end when the last decisive action has been delivered. There are no specific rules for an exact endpoint but it must adhere to the following rules:
* It must beat the game.
* It must be able to reach the credits or end screen without the viewer needing to do anything; all input must come solely from the input file (e.g. configuring the emulator to autofire after the end of playback is not allowed). An exception has been allowed for Rygar.
* It should end with the last input. Don't leave any blank input at the end of the movie.
Under special consideration we might allow movies that play a single level only or a part of the game only.
Do either of these scenarios count:
1. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to final FMV (the boss dies in the fmv, NO credits). Once the final FMV ends, the game automatically returns to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.
2. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to end credits. Once the credits end, the game automatically returns to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.*
3. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to end credits. Once the credits end, the game will only return to stage 1 if the player makes another controller input.
4. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to 'congratulations, thanks for playing' screen. If the player makes another input it will return to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.
5. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to 'congratulations, thanks for playing' screen. This screen is only displayed for a very short time (<60 frames), the player will automatically return to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.
Which of these, if any, are considered completing the game?
*Under normal circumstances, without glitches, the end credits would bring the player to the title screen (as is common).
Joined: 6/25/2007
Posts: 732
Location: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
2, 3, and 4 imo
Really, we don't have to work with hypotheses. We have the luxury of discussing real examples with the community. Present your example and it can be discussed. This is very subjective.
As I mentioned in the SMW thread, for me there are two requirements to consider the game beaten:
1) It needs to display some confirmation of victory - ending sequence, credits, "thanks for playing" etc.
2) It needs to do so because the player actually reached a win condition, not just glitched it into calling up the wrong graphic, entered a "view credits" cheat, etc.
The SMW one is interesting because it does achieve both of those without actually beating Bowser, by glitching the game into a win state. A lot of other runs do this; the SMW one is just more jarring because it just seems to spontaneously skip to "the end" after a couple minutes of bouncing fish and hopping around.
I recall there being a published run for a NES RPG (unfortunately can't remember what it was) that does similar: the player just starts a new game, enters a town, talks to someone, leaves, enters again, repeats this a few times and suddenly the credits roll. Again the game just seems to suddenly cut to the ending scene after a few minutes of seemingly random, pointless actions.
My opinion, though, is that rules were made to be broken, and the "rules" for TASes are more of guidelines. If you can make an interesting TAS that breaks a rule or two, it doesn't stop being interesting.
I recall there being a published run for a NES RPG (unfortunately can't remember what it was) that does similar: the player just starts a new game, enters a town, talks to someone, leaves, enters again, repeats this a few times and suddenly the credits roll. Again the game just seems to suddenly cut to the ending scene after a few minutes of seemingly random, pointless actions.
Here's a better one, finishing the game a third of a second after it starts.
Completion to credits is a bad metric in games where you can trigger the credits during the game itself (or even before; several games have a credits option in their main menu). It's not really obvious what metric should be used instead, though. (For games with high score tables, creating an entry in there that shows game completion other than via putting it in there directly using save or memory corruption probably counts, though, IMO.)
That one's a bit different though in that AFAIK it doesn't exploit any glitches - the game is just so ridiculous that you can win by random chance the first time you search. (Plus, it's just so damn entertaining to see the game beaten faster than it starts! :p)
In Rygar, the second half of the ending text does not appear until someone hits the key. The exception is that the movie can end when the final hit is delivered, and to see the second half of the ending text, the encoder must hit the key to turn the "page". In those encodings which I did, I pressed the key right when the song goes to the second part. Other encoders have hit it at other times or forgotten about the whole thing.
Completion to credits is a bad metric in games where you can trigger the credits during the game itself (or even before; several games have a credits option in their main menu). It's not really obvious what metric should be used instead, though. (For games with high score tables, creating an entry in there that shows game completion other than via putting it in there directly using save or memory corruption probably counts, though, IMO.)
For some games (especially the older, arcade-like NES ones) completion is attained after beating the last level, when the game loops to the first stage again.
It really is a case-by-case basis thing, I guess. It is difficult to think of any sort of rule that could be applied without requiring many exceptions...
Do either of these scenarios count:
1. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to final FMV (the boss dies in the fmv, NO credits). Once the final FMV ends, the game automatically returns to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.
2. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to end credits. Once the credits end, the game automatically returns to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.*
3. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to end credits. Once the credits end, the game will only return to stage 1 if the player makes another controller input.
4. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to 'congratulations, thanks for playing' screen. If the player makes another input it will return to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.
5. Plays through stage 1 of 100. 'Glitches' to 'congratulations, thanks for playing' screen. This screen is only displayed for a very short time (<60 frames), the player will automatically return to stage 1 exactly where the player left off.
With 1, the final FMV does not mean the game is beaten. There may be some player action AFTER the final FMV. So this doesn't count.
With 2, this is possible if the game in question naturally restarts the game after the credits, like Donkey Kong.
3 is almost the same as 2, but the fact that input is required to initiate the restart (a bit like in the walkathon for SMB, ending in the game ASKING for the player to press B) means it is somewhat better to show that the game is complete. This also applies to 4.
Finally, 5 is such that the completion screen is on for too short of a time for the human eye to notice normally. So this doesn't count either.
In Rygar, the second half of the ending text does not appear until someone hits the key. The exception is that the movie can end when the final hit is delivered, and to see the second half of the ending text, the encoder must hit the key to turn the "page". In those encodings which I did, I pressed the key right when the song goes to the second part. Other encoders have hit it at other times or forgotten about the whole thing.
Is this exception still relevant anymore? There are plenty of other games with interactive ending sequences, and there's even the recent [1946] SNES EarthBound "check glitch" by pirohiko, MUGG in 09:01.77 that found a way to skip all of the credits to jump directly to the ending screen and saved more than 10 minutes by doing so.
In Rygar, the second half of the ending text does not appear until someone hits the key. The exception is that the movie can end when the final hit is delivered, and to see the second half of the ending text, the encoder must hit the key to turn the "page". In those encodings which I did, I pressed the key right when the song goes to the second part. Other encoders have hit it at other times or forgotten about the whole thing.
Here's what kind of concerns me on this portion of the discussion. Similar to SmashManiac, I feel that this shouldn't be an exception. It should be a rule.
Namely, that there are a few runs that are very much similar to Rygar, in that there is a realistic absolute point where the game is "complete", in that it reaches the ending and subsequent credits, but requires additional keypresses to reach or clear the post-credit scenes. As is, either the user is forced to maintain input and artificially extend run time in order to complete these scenes (as is the case for Earthbound), or must accept that post-run scenes don't get to show (as is the case for Mega Man 10, though admittedly scrolling through achievements is minor, or what might happen with Mega Man Battle Network 2).
Rygar was an exception during the days when very few games required input after game completion. But now we have more runs that follow this rule, so, for clarity's sake if for nothing else, we should remove this exception, and either permit all runs to ask the encoder to perform basic post-completion actions, or force mid- and post-ending scenes to be played by the author (and simply grandfathering Rygar in).
First a movie gets submitted, and ends up accepted despite breaking rules other runs have been rejected for. And when I vote less than spectacularly on this movie, I become the victim of harassment and threats.
Yay, favoritism.
In my opinion,you have to reach an actual win state. any state where you can return to the game in progress afterwards when not intended by the game designer is not a true win state.
Only #3 counts, in my opinion.
The SMW entry is pretty unique in that it actually glitches into the win state.
For games that make a "clear" save, it's much easier to make the call. if you don't get your credit for clearing the game, it's not a real win state.
If you glitched into the credits for super mario bros 3, but starting your new game after didn't give you all the p wings, it wouldn't count. if you dont get your victory unlocks it doesn't count.
