Game objectives

  • Emulator used: lsnes rr2-β15
  • Demonstration
  • Heavy glitch abuse
  • Heavy luck manipulation

Comments

My first submission of 2014 is a Total Control TAS. I would suggest watching the movie before reading this submission text. Since this run was (just) streamed at AGDQ 2014, you can say that this was console verified :D. As you might notice, this TAS doesn't aim for speed and the reason why it doesn't end on last input is because I wanted the last picture as a suggested picture.

How did you do this?

If you really want to know then I suggest reading the submission text of the glitched SMW TAS, as the first around 100 seconds (until the game-breaking glitch) are the same.
In short: I manipulate where the moving objects (sprites) are located or where they despawn, then I swap the item in Yoshi's mouth with a flying ?-block (thus the yellow glitched shell) and using a glitch (stunning) to spawn a sprite which isn't used by SMW and since it tries to jump to the sprite routine location, it indexes everything wrong and jumps to a place I manipulated earlier with the sprites (OAM) and because of the P-Switch it jumps to controller registers and from there the arbitrary code execution is started.
Even shorter: Magic.

This run and the TASBot

So this TAS was designed to sync on the TASBot by true and dwangoAC. For example, I was limited by using only 3 multitap frames while I'm able to do 30. Though the bot can use all 8 controllers (2 multitaps) and since every controller has 16 buttons, that means 16 bits or 2 bytes for each controller, which are 2*8=16 bytes per multitap frame and 16*3=48 bytes per frame.

Suggested Screenshots

Thanks to

  • p4plus2 for helping me with more experienced ASM stuff
  • everyone that gave me weird ideas what to include in this run :D
  • AGDQ 2014 for creating a huge time pressure for me (that wasn't actually good)
  • true and dwangoAC for the console verification of this
  • YI2 for being the perfect level for Total Control

feos: Judging...
feos: Added AGDQ TASBot stream.
feos: This TAS is definitely TEH GREATEST MOVIE EVAH. Which somehow didn't prevent flamewars about it. First, I'll say about the similarities of this and the current any% run.
They use the same input to setup total control. It is known to be optimal, the fastest. Which means there is no copyright on it - in some cases only certain combination of button presses can be used to achieve the best result, and no matter how you alter it, it's basically the same.
None of these movies is a playaround within that setup time, so artistic choices would not matter. The way it is done is, again, the fastest. And therefore it was directly picked to be used in this submission (by the same author).
So what is the actual difference, after total control is gained? The any% run completes the game as fast as possible. It jumps right to the ending sequence. It is a world record in SMW. This submission does not complete the game. It does not jump to real ending. And it does not aim for speed (shortest input). Its goal is to demonstrate a concept: what can be done within SMW when total control is gained.
Second, due to heavy time pressure (AGDQ 2014), what we see here is what Masterjun came up with overall. It may be not perfect for everybody, so there is a room for obsoletion - if better stuff is programmed within total control. But for now it is the best payload existing. And posts and votes on this submission prove that.
Since this movie's goal is in no way speed, it can not be obsoleted by reaching the total control point faster, or by making input during total control shorter. Only by providing a better payload. Which will be judged by the audience response. If people like the new movie more (as happened with Pokemon total control), this one will be obsoleted by it.
Sum: accepting as a new branch.


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Noxxa
They/Them
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Nach wrote:
Warp wrote:
Nach wrote:
In good judgment, I don't see where we can accept this. It's slower than it should be, and the trade-offs could be better. Great demonstration video for gruefood delight.
I hope this was a joke.
Why should it be a joke? I genuinely believe that this is probably the greatest TAS ever made. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't include what looks like some sloppy play. The payload is playable, since it's playable, it falls into one of two categories: Speed - The fastest way to complete this is to jump straight to the end. Entertaining - To fill this with entertainment, the play of the games present should appear to be super human and not contain amateurish gameplay mistakes. Since it took the time to play the two games, then it should play them as expertly as possible. The Snake game should be played trying to manipulate luck if at all possible, or with foreknowledge of what the fixed apple appearing pattern is. Then proceeds to get the snake as long as possible as quick as possible. Do you honestly think the games are played "perfectly"? If so, explain why. If not, why do you think this should be ignored? Do you see another option here other than speed or entertainment? Our rules state that what looks like sloppy play to the average viewer is grounds for rejection. This run is an amazing accomplishment and one of the greatest things I've ever seen, but that doesn't mean we should overlook its faults. TASVideos is about getting as close to perfection as possible. To attack this problem from a different angle. Say we did accept this. Someone could come along tomorrow, start rerecording from the game menu, and then play Snake and Pong better and submit, and we'd be force to accept as an obsoletion. In fact, you can do that right now and still submit it while this is on the queue, and since those two games are simple, well, it'd be a rather simple way to *improve* this run right now. I imagine a bunch of our members are considering doing this as we speak, if they aren't already.
The point of the TAS gameplay in this submission is to bootstrap SMW as fast as possible, and not necessarily to finish the payload as fast as possible. The gameplay of the payload games in its current state perfectly demonstrates what it's intended to demonstrate, which is that the output consists of playable games. TASing the new games would drop the clarity about what the payload is. If a viewer sees a TASed snake run in here, that viewer may not even get to recognise it is snake being played. Also, if the TAS is judged on the play of the payload result, then the Pi movie would technically be improvable by crashing it as fast as possible. But that would remove the whole point of coding these 'games' in the first place, wouldn't it?
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.
Post subject: Re: Inception: the game in the game being TAS'ed is another TAS!
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dwangoAC wrote:
For those concerned that the game-within-the-game (specifically Snake) was not TAS'ed optimally, please note that the primary purpose of this TAS was to demonstrate total control in front of a live audience during AGDQ 2014. During the development process we even talked about popping up an infobox along the lines of "Hi AGDQ 2014! We have total control of this console. Here is what we can do with it." The payload that Masterjun settled on was a good balance between providing a payload that was appropriate in length for the time we were alloted in our block as well as something that was clearly arbitrary code that crated a standalone game which could then be played.
This all very well explains why it was great for that event. How does this justify accepting it here? Are we now expected to accept any TAS because it's known or popular, and ignore the merits of the TAS itself?
dwangoAC wrote:
The payload Masterjun crated intentionally included an "insert coins" arcade game style demo of the gameplay
Is that demo part of the payload or part of the input sent in the movie file? If the former, great. If the latter, then it should be as optimal or entertaining as possible.
dwangoAC wrote:
In my opinion, the payload for AGDQ was perfect - being able to have Tompa, who had no idea what was happening, compete against micro500 in Pong was absolutely amazing and added to the experience.
Indeed. It seems like a fantastic thing to do at that event. Terrific job. Congratulations to everyone who was involved and worked hard to make it a success.
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.
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Mothrayas wrote:
Also, if the TAS is judged on the play of the payload result, then the Pi movie would technically be improvable by crashing it as fast as possible. But that would remove the whole point of coding these 'games' in the first place, wouldn't it?
It'd be improvable speed wise. But that was clearly entertainment based, part of which was ensuring the run was exactly 3:14.15 seconds long, and getting many Pi related things onto the screen. Here on the other hand, the payload is also entertainment based, but doesn't necessarily ensure the highest levels of entertainment possible.
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.
Joined: 12/22/2009
Posts: 291
Location: Michigan
Holy fucking shit Nach. It's a demonstration. You people have glitchfests here that don't even try to be perfect in their execution. Get the fuck over it. e: he made this TAS in like three fucking days e2: fuck
Current projects: Yoshi's Island Disassembly Yoshi's Island any% TAS with Carl Sagan
Post subject: Re: Inception: the game in the game being TAS'ed is another TAS!
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Nach wrote:
Is that demo part of the payload or part of the input sent in the movie file? If the former, great. If the latter, then it should be as optimal or entertaining as possible.
If the judge demands it, I propose this movie as submitted be truncated to the frame that the payload completes, and a separate movie be submitted which completes the target game as fast as possible. There are two games here, so perhaps we would end up with three submissions in the queue. I would even be willing to create these two TAS's, but I feel that doing so would cheapen what Masterjun accomplished. I'll leave it up to the judge to decide. Thanks for your thoughts, A.C. ******
I was laid off in May 2023 and became too ill to work this year and could use support via Patreon or onetime donations as work on TASBot Re: and TASBot HD is stalled. I'm dwangoAC, TASVideos Senior Ambassador and BDFL of the TASBot community; when healthy, I post TAS content on YouTube.com/dwangoAC based on livestreams from Twitch.tv/dwangoAC.
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Nach wrote:
Why should it be a joke?
I thought that the entire point of the Moon tier was to allow for alternative goals (other than pure raw completion speed), and that a run can be published under that tier if it's found entertaining enough. Well, look at the votes and the comments. If those are not deserving of the Moon tier, I don't know what is. I don't see the problem here.
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A TAS of a snake game alone? Really? Aiming for what, entertainment? Errr...... Speed? Um... 1. Snake run aiming for entertainment is expected to fill the entire screen. But once one manipulates all apples spawn before one's nose, it's not even close to when a human plays it in real time filling the whole screen. No for entertainment from me. Example. 2. Snake run aiming for speed implies there is an ending. The ending being whatever Masterjun programs. He may program it to be 4 blocks wide for example. There's no point in aiming for speed for games that can be reprogrammed the either way. And yeah, currently there's no way to beat the snake minigame. So I don't even see it acceptable for publication. This TAS is so special because of the original goal: program a game inside SMW and TAS it. If this submission is accepted as is (I have no problems with that), anyone could still TAS the snake game inside the same movie, and we'd have no choice but to accept that as an improvement. Or reject that another submission because sloppy-ish play of a minigame is somehow better that tasing it (sounds odd considering our standards). While if snake gets really tased now, one wouldn't be able to obsolete it only by improving the snake minigame. Only by programming something better. Which is our goal: do the best and let only what's better obsolete it. PS: 3. I see no benefit in cutting this submission once minigames were programmed, since it won't conceptually differ from the "glitched ending" category.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Post subject: Re: Inception: the game in the game being TAS'ed is another TAS!
Joined: 12/10/2006
Posts: 118
dwangoAC wrote:
...There are two games here, so perhaps we would end up with three submissions in the queue...
Three submissions? Those two games are randomly chosen, you could have hundreds of games at their place, would you want see those tased in this movie, where is the connection to Super Mario World? You could even programm hundreds of different snake versions, i see no need to play the particular one used perfectly, because there is nothing special about it.
Joined: 8/14/2011
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Yea, usually TASes count as finished once the last input is done, intentionally so that further inputs can't prevent the game from finishing, which is - in this case - the ability to write and execute arbritary code. Concluding I'd say the game should be said to end at around 1:39 and everything after this point has no impact to the TAS at all. But then again I don't know how this would be treated, considering the novelty of the category "execute arbritary code".
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Nach wrote:
To attack this problem from a different angle. Say we did accept this. Someone could come along tomorrow, start rerecording from the game menu, and then play Snake and Pong better and submit, and we'd be force to accept as an obsoletion. In fact, you can do that right now and still submit it while this is on the queue, and since those two games are simple, well, it'd be a rather simple way to *improve* this run right now. I imagine a bunch of our members are considering doing this as we speak, if they aren't already.
Nobody will do that. Even if they did, it would be so obvious that I would reject it instantly for having the audacity of using this run and only improve the snake game. That's where your thoughts are stuck; pong and snake. Nobody gives a damn how optimized he did those things. It's called art and appreciate it for what it is. Let's not be extreme bureaucrats. This will be my final input of this matter as this discussion is draining the positive atmosphere of this run.
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
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AngerFist: you pick one of options I mentioned above: reject any run that does things differently than this submission after games were programmed, right? What would one need to do in order to obsolete it then?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
What would one need to do in order to obsolete it then?
Program something significantly more complex, impressive and entertaining, and then show a playthrough? (And before you object with those being subjective... well, entertainment is subjective. Let the voters tell their opinion.)
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I won't object, we need to know people's opinions on the entire situation to know how to treat submissions for the same branch.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Personman
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I think everyone is being very silly here. This run is an extreme special case of a kind that can crop up pretty much no more than once a year. There is no reason to try to shoehorn it into our existing publication guidelines. It is of immense historical and cultural importance for our community that this run be easily available in a user-friendly way on tasvideos.org. The easiest way to achieve this is publication. So we should just publish it. We could come up with an "AGDQ Tier" if we really wanted, or a more general "historical significance" tier. Movies there would be unobsoletable, not eligible for awards, and generally not thought of as publications - we'd just be using the publication flow to avoid the technical effort required to build out an entirely new class of movie page. I don't think any of this is really necessary though - I think we should just publish it (and not obsolete it). I also think it is very important that the publication page include, preferably as en embed but at least as a link, the video of the stream itself (maybe the entire TAS Block video with a timecode link to the beginning of this run?).
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The first few "snake and pong are not optimized" comments I thought were jokes, honestly, then I see it going on for a few pages. It's not the point, people! The point is that suddenly two completely normal players start playing Pong using Mario's head. It is truly art of the highest caliber.
Designer of Copy Kitty, a game about giant robots and explosions
sack_bot
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I believe the payload should always end with an "Input command" screen. That way, it leaves the movie programmable by a human, and shows complete control
Message me here for my discord. Current Project: Psycho Waluigi Project on wait list: None?
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Personman wrote:
We could come up with an "AGDQ Tier" if we really wanted, or a more general "historical significance" tier.
I have been proposing some kind of "demo" tier for years (although I'm not the first one to do so.) We may impose really, really high standards of quality for that tier in order to avoid it going out of hand. The submissions must be really exceptional to qualify. Just an idea.
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Good point Personman and Warp. Yeah, create a simple demo tier. Don't forget to accept my sextuple run! Sextuple or sixtuple?
Nitrogenesis wrote:
Guys I come from the DidyKnogRacist communite, and you are all wrong, tihs is the run of the mileniun and everyone who says otherwise dosnt know any bater! I found this run vary ease to masturbate too!!!! Don't fuck with me, I know this game so that mean I'm always right!StupedfackincommunityTASVideoz!!!!!!
Arc wrote:
I enjoyed this movie in which hands firmly gripping a shaft lead to balls deep in multiple holes.
natt wrote:
I don't want to get involved in this discussion, but as a point of fact C# is literally the first goddamn thing on that fucking page you linked did you even fucking read it
Cooljay wrote:
Mayor Haggar and Cody are such nice people for the community. Metro City's hospitals reached an all time new record of incoming patients due to their great efforts :P
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There you go: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=14776 Dunno if Demo tier has anything to do with this movie's ending though.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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Personman wrote:
I think everyone is being very silly here.
Personman wrote:
I think everyone is being very silly here.
Personman wrote:
I think everyone is being very silly here.
Personman wrote:
I think everyone is being very silly here.
thanks captain obvious, wish the rest of the crew would get with the fucking PROGRAM just tag this shit "playaround" or realize that this isn't a fucking TAS of snake or pong, the intended goal is to do the input exactly as shown, THE END SMILEY FACE
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Tub
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The goal of the run was met when the payload took over; if anything needs to be timed for obsoletion purposes, that's the point. Everything else is just showing off the outro, so to speak. When the whole difference between two runs is a choice to end input slightly earlier, or to keep input running to show off something weird in the credits, or even just to press a button to speed up the credits, then I cannot remember those differences ever having mattered wrt obsoletion. Everything past the glitch is just artistic freedom for entertainment. While we all agree that it could have been better if there hadn't been such a tight deadline, audience reaction has been very positive anyway, and the point of arbitrary code execution has been brought across. Obsoletion on non-speed sections has always been difficult. There's no frame counter on entertainment, and comparing audience reaction is a dark art at best. That hasn't stopped us from publishing playaround videos, and I don't think it should stop us this time. The payload playaround is not meant to be a speedrun. I don't think we had this case yet, but a "1-frame improvement" on entertainment videos doesn't make sense. If anyone wants to improve this run on entertainment grounds, they'd better bring a substantial improvement, like an entirely new payload, and not a five-minute job of shaving a few frames off here and there. (I'd personally like to see a run where the glitch just warps you to the end boss - of an entirely different game. Which you then proceed to kill.)
Personman wrote:
It is of immense historical and cultural importance for our community that this run be easily available in a user-friendly way on tasvideos.org.
It is also of immense historical and cultural importance for our community to discuss about rules and their special cases. :p
m00
Joined: 6/4/2009
Posts: 893
let's just close the subject and publish this as a showcase publication a la gradius 3.. also for the encode, i propose that we simply use the AGDQ stream... it would serve as good publicity stun and "kinda separate " the run from the rest of the submitions...
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Nicos wrote:
let's just close the subject and publish this as a showcase publication a la gradius 3.. also for the encode, i propose that we simply use the AGDQ stream... it would serve as good publicity stun and "kinda separate " the run from the rest of the submitions...
I think that stream should only be listed in the movie description, not used as an actual encode.
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Here's my opinion/suggestions on this debate. If we keep the rules/guidelines as-is (in which case the movie is judged as art, similar to Ryuto's Brain Age movie): - Publish? Yes, if entertaining. - Speedrunning the injected code? Not required. - Obsoletion by different arbitrary code? This would be a case-by-case basis, resulting either as obsoletion (like this) or as a new category. - Obsoletion by faster payload? Yes. - Obsoletion by better gameplay after payload? Yes, if audience response is better. If we create new demoscene rules/guidelines: - Publish? Yes, either as a Payload tier or as a Demo tier. The Payload tier would be a TAS up to the exploited state. The Demo tier would be a collection of demos with good audience response. - Speedrunning the injected code? Not required. - Obsoletion by different arbitrary code? Yes, if it's a new version of the same demo. Otherwise no, but it could still be published as a separate Demo-tier category instead. - Obsoletion by faster payload? Yes for the Payload tier. Not applicable for the Demo tier. - Obsoletion by better gameplay after payload? No, this would be considered a TAS of a homebrew game and fall under the Moon tier rules instead. In the end, one way or another doesn't change much, but the new tiers approach would be cleaner in my opinion and could potentially bridge the demoscene and TAS communities together.
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FanTAStic! I love the way you play the Pong and the Snake inside SMW. Yes vote of course. :)
Recent projects: SMB warpless TAS (2018), SMB warpless walkathon (2019), SMB something never done before (2019), Extra Mario Bros. (best ending) (2020).
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