Posted: 6/24/2012 7:46 AM
Post subject: Debug Mode TASes
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Brandon
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I once asked why there was no usage of the Player 2 Tricks used in the Mega Man 3 TAS as they would obviously save time. Someone responded (I think it was DarkKobold) that this would be against the rules as they would be considered cheat codes. I'm not sure I agree with that. Really, these options were probably used by the developers to debug the game, and they forgot to remove them or chose not to. Perhaps they are not legitimate enough to obsolete the original run, but certainly, in a world where this is publishable, these unintended tricks could potentially be utilized in a separate branch. Other games have debug modes as well, such as Sonic 1. Is there an audience for these kinds of runs? Would people prefer to see playarounds with them as opposed to regular speedruns?
All the best, Brandon Evans
Posted: 6/24/2012 8:09 AM
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Cooljay
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A TAS with Debug Mode glitch shouldn't be accepted on the bounds that the developers make them on the purposes of having full control of the game and making things easier for them. Having the pleasure of visiting a game studio and seeing how a debug mode works. They have the ability to warp to places where they want, remove them from the game(Which is rather humorous though to see people flock on where you went), Use any cheats they want, Spawn things for their ease. It's cool that it's there but I feel it removes the challenges ahead. Not to mention removes the fact a TAS is suppose to represent what a superhuman playing the game is doing.
Posted: 6/24/2012 10:47 AM
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AnS
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If the resulting TAS will be entertaining, it may be published as a concept demo, why not. Sure it can't compete with regular tool-assisted speedruns of the same game, so a playaround is probably the only way to go. But it'll require really versatile imagination, to make good use of debugging possibilities. Because the TAS will inevitably be compared to a machinima video, it has to provide some kind of narrative (consistency of events), so you can't just showcase all the tricks, you have to be creative. It's not as straightforward as pure speedrunning.
Posted: 6/24/2012 2:30 PM
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Brandon
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AnS wrote:
Sure it can't compete with regular tool-assisted speedruns of the same game, so a playaround is probably the only way to go.
See, I certainly agree with you with full fledged debug modes like Sonic 1's, but for a game like Mega Man 3, I feel like both could be acceptable as the debug mode is severely limited. I can't teleport or auto-kill everything, so I figure there's still a challenge in finding the best time using these methods.
All the best, Brandon Evans
Posted: 6/24/2012 6:04 PM
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AnS
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Brandon wrote:
for a game like Mega Man 3, I feel like both could be acceptable as the debug mode is severely limited. I can't teleport or auto-kill everything, so I figure there's still a challenge in finding the best time using these methods.
I understand, it's the same kind of challenge as How Many Five Year Olds Could You Take in a Fight, which is interesting in theory, but not quite noble in practice. Thus I figured a playaround would be much more popular than a speedrun.
Posted: 7/15/2012 9:25 PM
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MESHUGGAH
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NES TASer of 2013 NES TAS of 2013 NES TAS of 2012 NES TAS of 2011
I already saw many TASes with debug modes or debug codes and most of them was really funny. Nicovideo and youtube has a lot of them (of course they can not published on tasvideos).
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...