Hey guys, I'm just joining here in hopes of receiving feedback on some tool assisted Sonic 3K videos I've been working on over the past few months.
But first, a little about myself: video games have been a lifelong hobby of mine and some of my favorites include Perfect Dark, Dragon Quest 8, and Sonic 3&K. Over the years I've become something of a retro gaming enthusiast, and part of that includes watching speed runs, whether tool assisted or not, of older games. The first TAS I ever saw was SprintGod's well known TAS of S3K, several years ago. It blew my mind at the time and I've enjoyed watching TASes ever since.
Recently, I started playing around in Gens Rerecord for the first time and ended up producing the series of videos that I wanted to post about today. In them, I play as Knuckles, and the goal is to complete the level quickly and efficiently while collecting every ring that can be obtained by Knuckles without (heavy) glitches.
Here's a link to the full playlist containing all 8 videos I made so far: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHJbj1DoW994kUHiMSuK-rlhl94-IyQEx.
Here's a quick sample:
Link to video
I'm not sure if Youtube's quality is sufficient to really analyze the inner workings of a TAS, but I still have the original .gmv files in case that matters. Here are some things I hope to be able to discuss:
-Polish. I'm still new to TASing and I don't expect these would be technically impressive, but how bad (or good) are they? Is there any apparent bad habits or obvious mistakes I'm making?
-Content. I do try to utilize speed as much as I can, but it's secondary to gathering rings and, often, to killing enemies, particularly in big chain jumps. Is this interesting to watch? Is this art?
-Concept. Has the idea of a ring run-speed run been discussed or attempted here before? That's what I think of my videos as, except they also include the aforementioned killing of bad guys. If I started from the beginning and recorded a highly polished, full playthrough of the game like this, would it have a chance of being published? Or would it be ineligible to be published here for some reason?
-Tags. What kind of tags would apply to my recordings? Just curious. I did read through the tags portion of the site but I'm still confused. "Sacrifices speed for entertainment" sounded like it would fit at first, but then I read the description and it just seemed like it wouldn't apply in my case due to some technicality? What about these: collects all rings, takes no damage, uses no glitches? What about a demo or theory TAS?
-Anything else you want to discuss or comment on?
If this is posted on the wrong board for this I apologize, and if so please just direct me to a more appropriate board? Thanks.
For concept, the answer is yes. There was a run submitted for Sonic 2 in the category 'PERFECT BONUS' where Perfect Bonus (from grabbing all rings on the level) was acquired on every level possible:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12503
However, it was rejected due to being an arbitrary goal (on some levels you simply CAN'T get perfect bonus, or no one has found out how to yet - so what do you do?). That doesn't stop it from being an interesting TAS of course, just one that was not well defined for acceptance at tasvideos. Just keep that in mind - you can TAS to get on tasvideos, or you can TAS for some other reason (personal enjoyment, practice/improvement, to show something is possible, to speedrun a goal even if it's not very well defined/arbitrary, to show a real time route being done with no mistakes (called theory TAS)...)
For sonic 3 & knuckles, the game doesn't care how many rings you collect or how many bad guys you kill, and there is no way to prove that you collected them all/killed everything. So tasvideos would not accept such a movie, but it can still be a very good watch for its variety of movement/content/exploration of the level.
The topic for discussing sonic 2 'perfect bonus' is here, if you want to glance through it:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12070&highlight=
We have a number of sonic TASers on this site (I am not one), I am sure you can get a lot of feedback from one of them on movement.
It's also worth noting that the "Perfect Bonus" movie was rejected before the introduction of the three-tier publication system, which is much friendlier to arbitrary goals provided they make for an entertaining movie.
However, it was rejected due to being an arbitrary goal (on some levels you simply CAN'T get perfect bonus, or no one has found out how to yet - so what do you do?).
Forgive me for not reading through the thread more thoroughly, perhaps this was covered there, but if you don't mind me asking what's wrong with just getting the maximum rings possible in those stages where getting perfect is impossible? And far be it from me to judge this site's submission guidelines, I'm sure they know what they're doing and all, but as a newcomer I'm curious: how come TASvideos attempts to regulate its own self-proclaimed art? I mean, I personally agree that TASes are a form of art, but isn't the whole concept of rejecting certain submissions for having an "arbitrary goal", in itself arbitrary? If a submission is well done, why not give the author a chance to share his work with others?
Sorry, I maybe getting off topic.
Patashu wrote:
That doesn't stop it from being an interesting TAS of course, just one that was not well defined for acceptance at tasvideos. Just keep that in mind - you can TAS to get on tasvideos, or you can TAS for some other reason
Honestly, thanks for pointing this out, thinking in these terms has since allowed me greater creativity to play around with and TASing feels more rewarding because of it. True art doesn't strive to be a certain way, I guess I had been overlooking that fact.
Patashu wrote:
For sonic 3 & knuckles, the game doesn't care how many rings you collect or how many bad guys you kill, and there is no way to prove that you collected them all/killed everything.
I have to disagree with you here, though. I would say, the game does care about those things in that they're factored into your total score at the end. Granted, there's no achievements and whatever, but this was in the 1990's and a simple points system was all they had at the time. And as for proving that all rings are collected, I imagine that would be a fairly simple task given the extensive information about the games that exists thanks to the Sonic community online, right?
Not trying to argue or anything, just my thoughts. Sorry it took so long to reply.
boct1584 wrote:
the introduction of the three-tier publication system, which is much friendlier to arbitrary goals provided they make for an entertaining movie.
what's wrong with just getting the maximum rings possible in those stages where getting perfect is impossible?
Well, such goal just sounds pretty far-fetched, if you'd ask me.
But if you can make an entertaining movie while striving for this goal, then it's ok!
TheYogWog wrote:
how come TASvideos attempts to regulate its own self-proclaimed art?
There are TASers outside TASVideos, so the art is not "owned" by the site and is not "self-proclaimed" (or were you trying to make an insult?)
TASVideos only regulates the contents of the site archive (i.e. the showcase of the art), while the development of TAS art depends on many factors outside TASVideos' sphere of influence.
TheYogWog wrote:
I mean, I personally agree that TASes are a form of art, but isn't the whole concept of rejecting certain submissions for having an "arbitrary goal", in itself arbitrary?
Sure it is as arbitrary as any ruleset is, but it's solid alternative to chaos.
I guess it would be nice to have more sites dedicated to TASing, each one with a different ruleset, but the art it too niche right now, so there's not enough manpower.
TheYogWog wrote:
If a submission is well done, why not give the author a chance to share his work with others?
If a submisison is really well done, then it will be entertaining, and thus it will be accepted. If it's not accepted then it's not well done, at least not by the standards of the community.
TASVideos is not the only site on the Internet. There's always Youtube, NicoNico, etc. There's no such problem as "to share a work with others".
Also, once you upload your movie when making a submission, it's stored on the site forever, so even if it's not published to the main archive (any tier), it still available to anyone who e.g. likes the game and wants to see every existing TAS for it.
TheYogWog wrote:
True art doesn't strive to be a certain way
Also there are other proverbs like "Limitations boost creativity", etc. ;)
Just use whatever concept motivates you better.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1690
Location: RU · ID · AM
First of all, I am sorry for writing my reply in hurry and hence possibility to misnotice some things in the messages above. I have a really busy day, but AnS asked me to give my comments about the video in the first post.
As I already said about your run of ICZ1, this is pretty good for a newbie (you may want to see how usually newbie-level Sonic TASes look). However, this video is the case when I have a feeling that I could do it significally faster, so I let myself give you some advices.
1. As I already wrote, climbing in that obvious way is slower and also much less fun for the viewer.
2. Rolling off sloped surface gives you more acceleration than running. Despite the fact that your X speed gets «shaped» by 4096, your on-ground speed grows faster, and you can release it by jumping at proper point.
3. In the loops, there is a point after which the slope angle goes negative. It’s usually the best point for starting to roll.
4. In the loops (again), there are 3 most commonly used points for jumping. The corresponding jumps are called up-loop jump, down-loop jump and out-loop jump. You may read more about them in the knowledge base. Obvious fact about those jump points: more speed you have, harder to hit the point. To not miss the point, you often have to make some tricky positioning maneurs.
5. Watch your speed carefully. Red springs give you more speed than spin dash, but the spin dash gives more speed than yellow springs.
My last recommendation is very simple: instead of putting your efforts into a ring collection run, focus on the goal of pure speed. You will notice a lot more things about the game’s physics and also will realize what skills you have to improve.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
First of all, I am sorry for writing my reply in hurry and hence possibility to misnotice some things in the messages above. I have a really busy day, but AnS asked me to give my comments about the video in the first post.
As I already said about your run of ICZ1, this is pretty good for a newbie (you may want to see how usually newbie-level Sonic TASes look). However, this video is the case when I have a feeling that I could do it significally faster, so I let myself give you some advices.
1. As I already wrote, climbing in that obvious way is slower and also much less fun for the viewer.
2. Rolling off sloped surface gives you more acceleration than running. Despite the fact that your X speed gets «shaped» by 4096, your on-ground speed grows faster, and you can release it by jumping at proper point.
3. In the loops, there is a point after which the slope angle goes negative. It’s usually the best point for starting to roll.
4. In the loops (again), there are 3 most commonly used points for jumping. The corresponding jumps are called up-loop jump, down-loop jump and out-loop jump. You may read more about them in the knowledge base. Obvious fact about those jump points: more speed you have, harder to hit the point. To not miss the point, you often have to make some tricky positioning maneurs.
5. Watch your speed carefully. Red springs give you more speed than spin dash, but the spin dash gives more speed than yellow springs.
My last recommendation is very simple: instead of putting your efforts into a ring collection run, focus on the goal of pure speed. You will notice a lot more things about the game’s physics and also will realize what skills you have to improve.
Honestly, thanks for pointing this out, thinking in these terms has since allowed me greater creativity to play around with and TASing feels more rewarding because of it. True art doesn't strive to be a certain way, I guess I had been overlooking that fact...??
