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That's the first I've heard of it. If a new system was worked out and the admins are in favor, why hasn't it been mentioned on the forums until now? Do I need to join the IRC channel to join in on discussions like that?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on Bluesky
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That discussion is from some months back. There was an overall agreement to the idea, but it just never left the idea phase. Getting more coherent writing about the ideas, site implementation etc. would need to be left to adelikat or Nach, the latter of which I don't recall being involved in the discussion and the former of which tends to be busier/more interested in other stuff than site coding, until eventually we all forgot about it.
I personally think it would be an improvement on the current system - currently, to me, Moons seem too diluted and I'd like to see them go back to "notable publications" rather than 60% of publications, and scaling Vault down to only the truly "low"/Vault-esque publications, including other low-end games like the board games a lot of people seem to be clamoring about.
The middle ground would, in my mind, just be tierless/nameless, like old pre-Vault TASVideos. In effect, what I'd want to see would be similar to TASVideos as it used to be, just with the added Vault for those who are interested in those runs that didn't meet the old (or even current) game choice standards.
@z1mb0bw4y: I'd be willing to talk about the qualities (and lack thereof) of board games and how we can fit them in our site structure (see above), but I can't take you seriously if you try to argue that Tetris is a board game. It is a video game, no physical board nor physical pieces are involved.
For the record: I didn't just reject that submission because it was a board game, I rejected it because I didn't feel the game conformed to the site's standards as a proper, serious game. That is exactly why the board game/game show game/sports game/educational game rule is there in the first place. I know some people disagree with that rule, and that's what the new four-tier system idea is for, so let's focus discussion on that.
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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentomino
If you want to get technical about it, the Jenga game for DS isn't a board game either. All pieces and boards for that game are contained within the DS software and nothing about them is physical. Tetris board games have been made and pentomino board games predate tetris significantly. All that aside, my main point was that "chess has been made at least once on every platform and would result in too many publications" is a poor excuse when you look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tetris_variants
I've never seen a game rejected from tasvideos because "It's just another tetris game".
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Pentomino != Tetris
z1mb0bw4y wrote:
If you want to get technical about it, the Jenga game for DS isn't a board game either. All pieces and boards for that game are contained within the DS software and nothing about them is physical.
The Jenga video game is an adaptation of the board game. That is what the site rules mean by "board game" - just like Battle Chess is an adaptation of the chess game, and NES Othello is an adaptation of that board game. None of them are "literal" board games, but they are adaptations.
z1mb0bw4y wrote:
Tetris board games have been made and pentomino board games predate tetris significantly.
The Tetris board game (if it exists, but I'll just trust you on this one then) is an adaption of the video game. The video game is the original.
And again, Pentomino != Tetris
z1mb0bw4y wrote:
All that aside, my main point was that "chess has been made at least once on every platform and would result in too many publications" is a poor excuse when you look at this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Tetris_variants
I've never seen a game rejected from tasvideos because "It's just another tetris game".
Vault or not, various Tetris games were accepted even before tiers were introduced, and those would have been accepted for being interesting enough games on their own. Chess runs and other board game runes failed the criteria at that time, and were sufficiently bad that they were deemed not even good enough for the Vault - hence, the board game rule was created at the time.
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.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
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Mothrayas wrote:
That discussion is from some months back. There was an overall agreement to the idea, but it just never left the idea phase. Getting more coherent writing about the ideas, site implementation etc. would need to be left to adelikat or Nach, the latter of which I don't recall being involved in the discussion and the former of which tends to be busier/more interested in other stuff than site coding, until eventually we all forgot about it.
I personally think it would be an improvement on the current system - currently, to me, Moons seem too diluted and I'd like to see them go back to "notable publications" rather than 60% of publications, and scaling Vault down to only the truly "low"/Vault-esque publications, including other low-end games like the board games a lot of people seem to be clamoring about.
It'd definitely be an improvement, for sure.
The thing I wanted most out of all of these discussions is just comments from the admins. I'm well aware it'd take time to actually implement a complete restructure of the site, especially if tiering ends up automatic, but without public comment from one of you it just seems like our discussions are being ignored or thrown away due to a lack of personal interest.
Should we discuss this proposed new system? A few more good ideas might help spark it into being planned at the very least.
I can't take you seriously if you try to argue that Tetris is a board game
About that...
Link to video
On a more serious note, I don't mind the board game rule too much. I liked the Jenga run for what it's worth, but even with less than 3 minutes of content it kinda outstayed its welcome. If they were allowed, then there doesn't seem like any good reason to have to accept every single clone. I doubt people would flood the Workbench with hundreds of board game clones in the first place, and even if they did it's easy enough to judge them as not having any variation from whatever published runs there are.
The Tetris runs have different mechanics, different glitches and different strategies that allow for multiple Tetris runs to be published, plus the game itself is awesome to watch when someone's playing it well and it has a significant place in video game history.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
It was suggested, that Vault game-based criterion is lowered, Moons entertainment criterion is raised, and a middle tier is added, a to-be-defined tier.
I'm not sure I agree with that proposal (at least how I understand it from your description).
IMO the current tier system has its problems, but they are related to subjectiveness: A submission of any game is published if it gets a reception that's "positive enough", else it's published in the dumpsterVault, but only if it's an any% or 100% completion.
The major problems I see with that are: 1) the division is highly subjective and up to opinion, 2) it completely leaves out many games and even entire genres if they just aren't "entertaining" enough, and 3) it unfairly gives the impression of Vault publications as somehow "inferior".
I don't see how the change you mention would correct any of those problems, except perhaps that more games would be accepted (which admittedly would be a positive change).
The proposal of a complete rehaul of the tiers was discussed in length in that other thread some time ago, so there's no need to go through that again. (Although I still don't know exactly why it wasn't accepted.)
If that proposed rehaul is not feasible for whatever reason, then why not simply do as I have suggested, ie. just create a fourth tier for those submissions that do not fit anywhere else? I think it might be the easiest solution. (Although I would prefer the rehaul. Many people object to the bad reputation that Vault has, and I agree with them.)
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Warp wrote:
feos wrote:
It was suggested, that Vault game-based criterion is lowered, Moons entertainment criterion is raised, and a middle tier is added, a to-be-defined tier.
I'm not sure I agree with that proposal (at least how I understand it from your description).
IMO the current tier system has its problems, but they are related to subjectiveness: A submission of any game is published if it gets a reception that's "positive enough", else it's published in the dumpsterVault, but only if it's an any% or 100% completion.
The major problems I see with that are: 1) the division is highly subjective and up to opinion, 2) it completely leaves out many games and even entire genres if they just aren't "entertaining" enough, and 3) it unfairly gives the impression of Vault publications as somehow "inferior".
I don't see how the change you mention would correct any of those problems, except perhaps that more games would be accepted (which admittedly would be a positive change).
The proposal of a complete rehaul of the tiers was discussed in length in that other thread some time ago, so there's no need to go through that again. (Although I still don't know exactly why it wasn't accepted.)
If that proposed rehaul is not feasible for whatever reason, then why not simply do as I have suggested, ie. just create a fourth tier for those submissions that do not fit anywhere else? I think it might be the easiest solution. (Although I would prefer the rehaul. Many people object to the bad reputation that Vault has, and I agree with them.)
To address the problems you noted:
1) Entertainment value will always be subjective and up to opinion. We can't do anything about this. I still feel such a division is necessary; otherwise we would be putting Super Metroid in the same category as You Have To Burn The Rope. The tier system exists to separate them so users can more easily find the higher quality runs. But naturally, there will always be borderline cases.
2) This is covered by lowering the standards of the Vault. By lowering, we mean things like board games and other such genres can be accepted to the new Vault even if they currently are not accepted at all.
3) Due to the nature of the Vault, it's hard to shake off such an impression. It was after all created from the need to 'lower' our standards. The new proposal will likely not make it much better, but it will also mean that much fewer runs are affected by the "Vault stigma". Perhaps the raised focus on different genres like board games and the like may make the tier appear more 'quirky' than 'bad', but it's not terribly likely.
The rehaul proposal you mention has not been implemented for the same reason that no other change has been implemented: there's a lack of interest and site coding manpower with site management, who are rather off putting time into their own projects. Additionally, according to the poll in the exact same thread the rehaul was discussed, 75% of voters disagreed to change the tier structure. I'd like to see some more support if we were to go that route. Additionally, for me to consider it, I'd like to see a single organized post that details exactly what your idea is. (If there is such a post and I've missed it, please put a link to 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.
1) Entertainment value will always be subjective and up to opinion. We can't do anything about this. I still feel such a division is necessary; otherwise we would be putting Super Metroid in the same category as You Have To Burn The Rope. The tier system exists to separate them so users can more easily find the higher quality runs. But naturally, there will always be borderline cases.
Doesn't the rating system take care of that?
Additionally, for me to consider it, I'd like to see a single organized post that details exactly what your idea is. (If there is such a post and I've missed it, please put a link to it.)
I suppose these two are like that:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=394886#394886http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=394961#394961
In short, the new "vault" would contain all any% and 100% TASes, not just the "boring" ones, the new "moons" (suggested "coins" in the thread) would contain all other game completions that are not any% nor 100%, stars would be like currently, and additionally there would be a fourth "demo" tier for anything else noteworthy or that doesn't fit into the other categories (this might include eg. board games with no clear game completion).
It's just a suggestion, and open to improvements.
I suppose this is very similar to what I have suggested in this thread, the difference being that "Vault" would contain all any% and 100% runs, not just the boring ones. (Also another significant difference is that the suggested tier system would remove subjectivity, since it's entirely goal-based. With the exception of stars; that's ok IMO.)
I think most board games fail to qualify for publication on a fairly basic level, triviality. Not every game has a run after all, and particularly things like rhythm or reaction games, while entertaining, are completely trivial in a TAS environment. A prime characteristic of board games is that the number of actions and outcomes are very limited and strictly defined. Certain outcomes may be extremely rare, but so is the outcome of every single turn in a battle of a heavily RNG-based RPG, and most board games have completion/victory states within a few actions, if not only one or two. Take the recent Jenga submission for example. Barring the only glitch stage, it's the same single bit of luck manipulation repeated 10ish times. It is MORE complex than your Wario Wares or what have you, but in my mind, not enough.
If you can produce a particularly creative or entertaining run within those limitations, then there's no question at all, but otherwise, most board games have very easily identified strategies and require a very small amount of luck manipulation to get to them. I don't agree that it's a good idea to create a tier or category just to accommodate them if they can't though.
I feel there's also some clarification left that's needed for goal choice in them if going forward with the extra tier to prevent it from being completely arbitrary above reproach. Hardest difficulty for Monopoly would surely involve the maximum number of players, but I can't see a run like that existing beside the gimmicky moon 4 player quick win/CPU self-destruct ones we have now.
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Warp wrote:
Mothrayas wrote:
1) Entertainment value will always be subjective and up to opinion. We can't do anything about this. I still feel such a division is necessary; otherwise we would be putting Super Metroid in the same category as You Have To Burn The Rope. The tier system exists to separate them so users can more easily find the higher quality runs. But naturally, there will always be borderline cases.
Doesn't the rating system take care of that?
The rating system does very little in the way of filtering, which is what the tiers are used for. (The movie pages by default exclude Vault movies, unless you select "All" movies for a particular system).
The only movie page affected by rating is the obscure Popular Movies page, and as it automatically sorts by rating, it is not exactly easy to browse for a particular movie/game you may want to look for.
Warp wrote:
Additionally, for me to consider it, I'd like to see a single organized post that details exactly what your idea is. (If there is such a post and I've missed it, please put a link to it.)
I suppose these two are like that:
http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=394886#394886http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=394961#394961
In short, the new "vault" would contain all any% and 100% TASes, not just the "boring" ones, the new "moons" (suggested "coins" in the thread) would contain all other game completions that are not any% nor 100%, stars would be like currently, and additionally there would be a fourth "demo" tier for anything else noteworthy or that doesn't fit into the other categories (this might include eg. board games with no clear game completion).
It's just a suggestion, and open to improvements.
I suppose this is very similar to what I have suggested in this thread, the difference being that "Vault" would contain all any% and 100% runs, not just the boring ones. (Also another significant difference is that the suggested tier system would remove subjectivity, since it's entirely goal-based. With the exception of stars; that's ok IMO.)
The problem I have with this is similar to what I already stated, you would have Super Metroid and You Have To Burn The Rope in the same "tier". For that matter, it puts runs of the same (high) quality level in different tiers (with e.g. SM 100% in one tier, and SM "Reverse Boss Order" in the other tier) - which undermines the hierarchical structure of tiers, as both tiers are now more or less "equal" to each other. In effect, the whole concept of tiers is now negated, and it just splits the site content in two categories, esoteric goals and non-esoteric goals. It solves the ambiguity issue with tiers, but negates much of their purpose as well, which is to filter out lower rated runs and make the high quality runs stand out more (regardless of whether they have an esoteric goal or not).
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.
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It just hit me that if we were to move to a system that was based on movie ratings after publication, we'd need to do more to promote rating movies in general, else we're just gonna keep piling run after run into a single category, which would eventually lead to situations like Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Myst DS being in the same category.
If this four-tier system were to be implemented, would we go back to using ratings as our system of judging submissions?
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
I don't think the current tier system would exclude adding a fourth tier where things like board games and more esoteric notable TASes could be published.
Anyway, since the rationale behind the current Vault/Moon tier system is to help find the most liked TASes, I was curious to compare the lowest-rated Moon runs with the highest-rated Vault runs.
It turns out that a non-insignificant amount of Moon publications have a relatively low rating, the lowest combined ratings being 4.1, 4.2, 4.9, and 5.0. In contrast, five Vault TASes have a combined rating of 7+ (7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 7.0, and 7.0.) A quite large amount have a combined rating of 6+.
Does the current Vault/Moon tier division really reflect popularity that well?
I don't think the current tier system would exclude adding a fourth tier where things like board games and more esoteric notable TASes could be published.
This is what i thought when http://tasvideos.org/3383S.html was rejected back in 2011.
I really would like a tier for those board games or games like WarioWare, Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright, etc. just for the technical record.
I don't think we should reject any submission because of the GAME, even if they're boring as hell, it's the technical fastest time with frame perfect text skipping or RNG manipulation that matters, at least for me.
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So far, I can't recall a single post saying "board games should not start being accepted". Was there any?
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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Posts: 4090
Location: The Netherlands
Warp wrote:
I don't think the current tier system would exclude adding a fourth tier where things like board games and more esoteric notable TASes could be published.
Anyway, since the rationale behind the current Vault/Moon tier system is to help find the most liked TASes, I was curious to compare the lowest-rated Moon runs with the highest-rated Vault runs.
It turns out that a non-insignificant amount of Moon publications have a relatively low rating, the lowest combined ratings being 4.1, 4.2, 4.9, and 5.0. In contrast, five Vault TASes have a combined rating of 7+ (7.3, 7.2, 7.1, 7.0, and 7.0.) A quite large amount have a combined rating of 6+.
Does the current Vault/Moon tier division really reflect popularity that well?
Many of the Moons movies you listed are movies with categories that disqualify them from the Vault, and aren't great entertainment-wise but managed to get published anyway. Some are even from before tiers were introduced. And yet others are published to Moons due to positive viewer response when it is submitted, yet receive low ratings when it is published. There's a notable discrepancy between submission voter results and movie rating results at times.
The Vault movies you listed all have entertainment ratings of around 6, but have higher technical ratings that boost the overall rating. Even Vault movies can have high technical ratings even if they are just average by entertainment standards, resulting in a 7+ overall rating.
Zekrom101 wrote:
This is what i thought when http://tasvideos.org/3383S.html was rejected back in 2011.
I really would like a tier for those board games or games like WarioWare, Professor Layton, Phoenix Wright, etc. just for the technical record.
I don't think we should reject any submission because of the GAME, even if they're boring as hell, it's the technical fastest time with frame perfect text skipping or RNG manipulation that matters, at least for me.
WarioWare is a different case than the board game genres or other genres of that sort. It was rejected not because it was an unacceptable genre, it was because due to how the game works, the speed record is effectively trivial, and therefore meaningless. We expect a modicum of effort being required to get a speed record for a publication, and games like WarioWare fail that criteria.
It's debatable whether with the new Vault idea we can start accepting trivial speed records like WarioWare, but I would argue against it. I'd like to see publications still be meaningful records, even under the new system.
feos wrote:
So far, I can't recall a single post saying "board games should not start being accepted". Was there any?
Under the current site system I would not accept board games. They don't conform to the quality standards of publishable games for this site. This is why we are discussing new systems that lower these standards.
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.
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Mothrayas wrote:
feos wrote:
So far, I can't recall a single post saying "board games should not start being accepted". Was there any?
Under the current site system I would not accept board games. They don't conform to the quality standards of publishable games for this site. This is why we are discussing new systems that lower these standards.
Which was not my question. It was: "How many people think we should not tweak the system to include board games?", and optionally, "Why?". All I really remember is people saying board games would cause certain problems, but those were more or less resolved during discussion.
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.
Which was not my question. It was: "How many people think we should not tweak the system to include board games?", and optionally, "Why?". All I really remember is people saying board games would cause certain problems, but those were more or less resolved during discussion.
I've yet to see any answers regarding different versions of non-chess board games such as these two:
Tangent wrote:
If tomorrow, some submitted some 10 odd chess TASes, I doubt it'd go over well. And to illustrate how much redundancy is possible, there are nearly 50 different mahjong games (and almost 30 pachinko!) on the SNES alone. How much variation do you expect is between all of them?
The only thing that was somewhat resolved was chess, and that arguement was for difference in each chess engine makes it unique. How about games like monopoly or the 2 above? Is it better to accept them all, or have them obsolete each other due to similar content?
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jlun2 wrote:
Is it better to accept them all, or have them obsolete each other due to similar content?
I'd go with 1 game per platform for each category. That way, any% might beat one version, and hardest difficulty would beat another version of the game due to the result looking more interesting or spending less time on an equally interesting/challenging run. Somewhat like polity for hacks.
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.
I'd go with 1 game per platform for each category. That way, any% might beat one version, and hardest difficulty would beat another version of the game due to the result looking more interesting or spending less time on an equally interesting/challenging run. Somewhat like polity for hacks.
I think this should be handled in a way that works more like a guideline instead of a strict rule. Imagine there are two versions of exactly the same board game getting a TAS, but the strategies used are completely different. It would suck having to reject one of them just because of a really strict rule.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I'd go with 1 game per platform for each category. That way, any% might beat one version, and hardest difficulty would beat another version of the game due to the result looking more interesting or spending less time on an equally interesting/challenging run. Somewhat like polity for hacks.
I think this should be handled in a way that works more like a guideline instead of a strict rule. Imagine there are two versions of exactly the same board game getting a TAS, but the strategies used are completely different. It would suck having to reject one of them just because of a really strict rule.
Even if the strategies are different because of something like length of animations? Because Battle Chess comes to mind.
Is it better to accept them all, or have them obsolete each other due to similar content?
I'd go with 1 game per platform for each category. That way, any% might beat one version, and hardest difficulty would beat another version of the game due to the result looking more interesting or spending less time on an equally interesting/challenging run. Somewhat like polity for hacks.
IMO I don't see any problem in accepting several eg. chess TASes for the same platform if the submitter can argue why it's different enough than the existing one(s).
For example, one TAS could be of battle chess, just because it looks cooler. Another one could be of a notoriously strong chess game for the same platform, just because it would be interesting to see how many moves it takes to beat it.