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TAS Details

  • Emulator: Bizhawk 1.7
  • Optimized for Real-Time
  • Uses damage to cut time
  • Exploits deep mechanical discoveries by Kejardon, EternisedDragon, and Sniq
  • Introduces Spike Spark / Flash Suit for the first time ever in a TAS (Discovered Summer 2015 by EternisedDragon)
  • Introduces Boomerang for the first time in a TAS.

About

This is a Tool Assisted Speedrun of the popular Super Metroid game in the category of 100% Map Completion. It has been improved in almost every room by either optimizing existing strategies, altering strategies (in room routing, or change of method used), minor room to room route changes, correction of door transition problems, or applying recent discoveries to cut more time. This 2nd version cuts 2:26.77 from the original (released in June 2015). This now puts the TAS at 12:03.67 ahead of the WR, held by SweetNumb. During the 9 months of re-scripting, EternisedDragon (E D as we call him) played an important role in advising and discussing techniques on best approaches to further the time cuts. In addition to E D, the following people also contributed details that helped out as well:
  • SweetNumb (100% Map Completion concepts and routing)
  • Total (Various techniques, RAM watch suggestions, and frame cutting suggestions)
  • Sniq (Concepts for speed boost incrementation and Soft unmorphing)
  • Taco (RAM Address values, Soft unmorphing help)
  • Dessyreqt (RAM Address suggestions for space jump detection)
  • Foosda (Various speed running techniques)
  • Cpadolf (Soft unmorphing information for tricking Wrecked Ship treadmill)

New Times

  • TAS Time: 1 Hour 12 Minutes and 32.16 Seconds (Previous Time: 1 Hour 14 minutes and 58.93 Seconds)
  • RTA Converted Time: 1 Hour 10 Minutes and 11.33 Seconds (Previous Time: 1 Hour 12 Minutes and 38.1 Seconds)
  • Human World Record: 1 Hour 22 Minutes and 15 Seconds (By Sweetnumb)

Twitch Commentary Stream

https://www.twitch.tv/nymx_/v/64098570

Provided attachments

  • TAS Script (With TAS submission)
  • LUA Script for confirming map tile visitation [dead link remvoved] (A controversial tile in Green Brinstar Fireflea Room has been added to the LUA counter in order to reduce confusion. Normal count is 247, with hidden tile...becomes 248)
  • V1 / V2 Comparison Spreadsheet [dead link removed] (Open Office Spreadsheet format)

Tools Used In This Recreation

RAM Watch

Visual analysis of the game does not supply critical information needed in order to understand Samus's position, speed, and status. By analyzing various addresses, conditions can be discovered for proper strategy application...such as detecting the speed boost counter during heavy lag. Additionally, RAM watch was used to alter existing values to experiment for possible theories.

LUA Scripting

Interfacing to Bizhawk's provided API, allowed me to programmatically check conditions that would have been otherwise, painfully slow. Multiple scripts were written to also provide data for analysis in the following areas: Map Tile Visitation Confirmation (use to show that every square was visited in the game, thus fulfilling the categories intended goal) Door Transition Frame Markers (use for comparing between version 1 and 2 TASes)

NotePad++

The built in feature of this tool allowed for faster TASing, by using macros instead of manually creating certain inputs. Additionally, altering the script with this tool made it easier and faster.

100% Map Completion Only Techniques

This TAS showcases techniques that are not applicable to any other TAS;thus, providing entertainment that would not be possible or would otherwise waste time. These techniques are absolute necessities for ensuring that 100% Map is as optimal as it can be.

Watergate Spark

This shinespark at the Grapple Training Room 3 (in conjunction with the Green Gate Glitch, or GGG), allowed for time saving approximately 8 seconds to perform the lower crocomire area in reverse.

Mote Spark

This shinespark helps to color in the lower parts of the moat and quickly escape the water(heading towards Wrecked Ship). This prevents 2 extra returns to this rooms and alters the routing dramatically, thus preventing re-visitation, as the RTA runs must do.

Up and Over Spark

This is shinespark is required to bypass the 3 Oums.

Boomerang

The Dechora Room Energy Station can be exited extremely fast, due to the full build of of speed booster. This discovery by Kejardon helped to cut 55 frames off exiting the room visit immediately before the door closes, having stayed in the room only 3 frames.

Fish Tank Spark

An apparent TAS only shinespark takes same quickly through the Fish Tank straight to Maridia Mountain.

New Speed Fighting Techniques (Not 100% Map related, but noteworthy improvements):

Kriad's Lair

Spike Spark / Flash Suit was used to reduce lag...cutting 85 frames from the boss fight.

Spore Spawn

This categories requires the visitation of this mini boss in order to color in the squares. In doing so, acquired items play a roll in escaping faster. In this case, space jump was used in a way to kill the boss and leave the room simultaneously.

Major Improvement Details (minor and other details can be found on the attached spreadsheet)

Although most improvements are related to optimizing the existing TAS, other improvements came from newly founds discoveries...namely the Spike Spark / Flash Suit. Also, "Boomerang" is also used for the first time in a released TAS. For a room by room analysis, please refer to the provided spreadsheet. Highlight of major improvements:

Blue Brinstar (First Visit)

Obtained early E-Tank in order to set focus on ammo farming. Although a loss of 1618 frames occurred, these frames were easily recovered by the time Samus visits Crocomire's lair. This extra energy shifted the focus to speed techniques, rather than depleting health and diminishing any abilities due to that low health.

Green Brinstar (First Visit)

Early items taken from Blue Brinstar have opened up the first recovery time by skipping a missile expansion pack. In route to Crocomire, drop manipulation was performed to focus on using energy more wisely for speed techniques such as damage boosting.

Norfair (First Visit)

In final approach to Crocomire, CWJ was used in place of health farming to prevent further health loss in the suit-less run through Cathedral and Lava ball rooms. Upon Crocomire fall, a shinespark was used to escape lag and traverse the acid vat to the E-Tank. In traversing the Crocomire Escape room, the occurrence of coloring in squares was optimized by passing through the cross-hairs of 4 sqaure sections. This dramatically cut down visitation time and made the TAS look less like 100% map completion.

Red Brinstar (2nd Visit)

Used Red Tower Shinespark for entertainment (even though this beats RTA timing by about 1/2 second). The secret to this spark was to properly place and time a missile before shinesparking, thus clearing the Shotblock at the top of the tower before passing through the opened area. This is an original shinespark fulfilling a theory and dream I've had since I first played this game.

Wrecked Ship

Most notable room in the entire game comes from tackling on a Fast Left Phantoon pattern. This feat cut 661 frames. As with the previous, this was the beginning of health concerns that lasted until the next acquired E-Tank. The second most time saving effort came from a suggestion from Cpadolf that led to future conversations with Taco and E D, where the discussion of soft unmorhping (sub-pixel related) was needed in order to trick the treadmill from moving Samus against her own. This allow for building up a blue suit to mockball through two areas in the next room...saving 134 frames.

Maridia

First occurrence of Spike Spark occurs after the death of Draygon and it created using the broken turrets. This trade off from obtaining blue suit, allows Samus to move a full speeds, where the limitation of blue suit prohibits the use of the dash button. Critical map visitation square was found when visiting Maridia Mountain again, where Samus's horizontally shinesparks to crash into grapple block. From this point, in-room routing was changed to pick up the left most square in Samus's reach as not time cost. This saved 81 frames on the final pass through of Maridia, heading towards Red Brinstar.

Brinstar (Warehouse)

Spike Spark's lack of animations keeps the normal lag of Kraid's emergence from occurring. This cut 85 frames from the boss fight and has the possibility of being the fastest fight known. The final recovery of the early route change in Blue Brinstar, occur by skipping the E-Tank associated with the Warehouse...which saved 471 frames. The final Spike Spark setup occurs at the Acid Snakes Tunnel and is carried through with the Flash Suit at the double chamber. The community is calling the new spark, which occurs going into the Wave Room...Wave Fly. This is an original shinespark and most likely not to be used in TASes other than 100% Map.

Lower Norfair

Other than the normal optimizations, the most important cuts occurred starting at the Metal Pirates where the two frame vulnerability of the pirates was exploited. The improved fighting techniques positions Samus for a long build of speed that traverses the next two rooms with more speed and cuts even more frames. Lastly, the Ridley fight was improved dramatically by 455 frames due to a heavy focus on holding a high super missile count(which cause 600 HP against this boss, rather than the usual 300), followed by finding the magic frame to trigger Ridley's early death.

Maridia (Final Visit)

Early map tile visit, prevents waste of time leaving Maridia and saving the previously mentioned 81 frames.

Crateria (2nd Visit)

In the Crateria Super Room, the spikes in the parallel column to the right of the climb was used to build up the speed boost counter in order to achieve blue suit. This was a critical technique to escape the bomb block at the top of The Climb for a faster escape.
Samsara: Judging.
Samsara: Hi nymx, glad to see you're still motivated to work after last year's debacle.
After taking a look at the run, I have to agree with everyone's assessment that you have definitely improved as a TASer, and the run in itself was indeed a more entertaining watch because of the improved level of skill and control. I'm looking forward to seeing what you produce in the future, and I'm sure others would like to see that work as well. However, the main issue still persists from your previous submission: The category. A lot of this run is spent going into rooms, only to leave them immediately afterward, which is offputting to a lot of viewers. At the time of me writing this, the run has as many No votes (12) as Yes votes and Meh votes combined (8 and 4, respectively), giving the run an overall average of 40% with our voting metric, well below the bar we set for non-standard categories to be accepted.
I have to say that, after the reception that both of these submissions received, that the audience has deemed the "100% Map Completion" category as being unsuitable for site publication. You mentioned you would be going back to work on a third version, and that's definitely okay, however I will say that any future 100% Map Completion runs will also be rejected due to the category. That's not to say there isn't a place on this site for this run or any future runs: There's always the Super Metroid game thread to post WIPs and finished runs like these that may not be publishable (your Spore Spawn run comes to mind here as well). As I probably mentioned in one of the threads, submitting a run for publication opens it up to intense scrutiny. We have rules and standards in place that all of our runs need to meet in order to be published, but this only applies to site submissions, not the game threads in the rest of the forums.
I definitely recommend sticking around the community and engaging more with the other Super Metroid TASers we have, not just to improve your own skills, but possibly to see if the tricks you've been discovering in these runs could be applied to other categories. Perhaps you could even try working on an improvement to one of our published runs, or even looking into discovering new tricks that could improve them further than anyone could have imagined. Even with all of that, I do urge you to continue TASing these more oblique categories as well, because that kind of out-of-the-box thinking is what we need more of in the community. You could stumble upon the most important discovery since arm-pumping with these kinds of runs... But as I said, these kinds of runs are also the most scrutinized submissions on the site, so even if you do work on a third version of this run, or any other strange category, please keep them within the game thread.
Even though the level of optimization has definitely improved since the previous submission, I'm rejecting this category due to a negative audience reception.
Samsara: Revisiting this one.
Samsara: Moving to Playground. There's possibly some discussion to be had about the nature of the category as a publishable branch, but now isn't the time for that.

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Posted: 5/9/2016 5:03 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Samsara
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Senior Judge, Site Admin, Expert player (2109)
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
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Homebrew TAS of 2023 Exotic platforms TAS of 2020 Sega TAS of 2016
Schmeman wrote:
Anyway, I don't understand why the site would not want to have this TAS. Do whatever you decide, but the concept of denying this TAS is baffling to me. No disrespect meant, just confusion on my side. It's a good TAS and would only serve to better the site.
Hi, welcome back. I'd like to start off with a simple, blunt statement: You don't understand how we operate. We don't have the same standards as other sites that will just accept anything. In fact, we have much higher standards than most other sites. From what I've read in the thread, most people just see no point to this category. Some people say it should be combined with a normal 100% run, other people say there's just no entertainment in entering rooms only to immediately leave them right afterward. Some people have said this category offers nothing that the fifteen or three hundred other categories we have published don't already do, and I have to agree with those people. What we don't want is extraneous, unnecessary publications. All we are doing is rejecting TASes from site publication. That means next to nothing in the long run. Site publication, to me, is nothing more than an ascended privilege anyway. I know a lot of people (and my own staff position) disagree with me on that, but I feel it's the truth. Our goal as a site is to host a repository of TASes: The Vault was created so we could host normal speed records, but the rest of the TASes on the site have met a high entertainment quota, one that we strive to push further and further with every new publication, and because of this we can't allow every single run we get to be published. I believe I brought up an example last time around, though my memory is hazy as if I'm trying to repress it, of a Donkey Kong Country TAS that only collects O, N, and G out of the KONG letters in every level. This does exist somewhere, on Nicovideo I believe. But that's a prime example of a run that, even if it's ridiculously optimized, serves no purpose in being published here. Our standards don't allow arbitrary goals such as that. And I mean arbitrary as in our site standards: Arbitrary, to us, means a category that just doesn't make sense to publish. It's unnecessary, it's niche, it's extraneous, and it's not going to further our site in any way by publishing it. In fact, something like this could turn away the community if we publish it. "Why would you accept this but not that?" "Ugh, another Super Metroid publication, really?" Just a couple examples off the top of my head that I could definitely see happening were we to publish this after its current reception. We cater to a community as a whole, being a TAS repository, we don't cater to each individual subcommunity. We listen to and respect what our community wants from us, and in return our community blesses us by following the rules and standards that we set. Had the community given us a much more positive response to this run, we would accept it, but in its current state with the voting and the thread feedback, I can't see that happening now, and going against the community would be disastrous. I've said a million times that I will never discourage anyone from making any TAS they want. The fact that this TAS exists is absolutely fine. People will enjoy it, that's great. I just don't see what the big deal is about publication. As I said, this could have been easily posted in the Super Metroid game thread, this could have been shared on DeerTier or any other site, and it would still have the same effect. A run like this can still "better the site" and contribute greatly to other TASes by just being posted here and shared elsewhere. But as I said, publication is nothing more than a privilege. I could understand the sentiment of publication being important if we were much bigger of a site than we currently are, but we're still a tiny niche in an already niche subculture. As for having "too many" Super Metroid runs: We already have too many. At least three of the currently published runs are extraneous in my mind and that's me being generous. I personally (emphasis on personally) believe we shouldn't be biased toward one game or another, we shouldn't have people loving runs just because they're of certain games or hating runs because they're not other games. I feel like we've always been biased toward Super Metroid, allowing damn near every run we get to be published, and we've only recently realized that we may have gone too far back then. What we really need are runs that showcase different content, runs that are unique and show off incredible things, not 7 derivative runs: Why do we need an in-game time run? Why do we need multiple low% categories? What incredible things do they show off that aren't in every other run? Who is going to be interested in these runs apart from the Super Metroid sub-community? Would the general public care about a run that enters different doors to get a lower in-game time? These are all things you have to consider when you're in my situation, and they're all things you have to consider when you're trying to argue for the millionth new Super Metroid category as an outsider as well. Fans of the game have to approach it from an outsider's perspective, because the general public won't have the same sort of appreciation for a run. And, yes, I've repeated myself 20 times in this response already but it bears mentioning again, we cater to the general public more than anything else, thus we need to set these standards so we're not flooding people with a thousand runs they have no intention of ever watching. A recent example of this kind of behavior is our recent efforts to upload encodes of every run on the site, including obsoleted runs, to our official YouTube channel. This means we've had long strings of similar runs being processed and published to the general public, and the general public reacted with backlash at seeing the same games over and over again. tl;dr - When we reject a TAS, that only means we reject it from site publication. We are not rejecting the TAS itself. Anyone can feel free to make whatever TAS they want and post it here, whether in userfiles or in the game's thread. It's just that when it's submitted to the site, it's subject to our high standards, and our high standards are different than other sites. If you don't understand our process or our standards, then join the community and learn them before coming in to a submission thread and complaining about us. We aim to host a variety of extremely entertaining runs that anyone can watch easily, as well as cutting down on repetition by limiting arbitrary categories so as to keep that variety without needing 10 publications to do so. Phew.
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
warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Posted: 5/9/2016 6:52 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Schmeman
Joined: 6/8/2015
Posts: 30
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Posted: 5/9/2016 7:04 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Invariel
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Editor, Site Developer, Player (171)
Joined: 8/11/2011
Posts: 539
Location: Toronto, Ontario
Arcade TAS of 2023
29 publications (not submissions) over 12 years across seven branches. Those branches are "game end glitch", "100%", "low% Speedbooster", "low% Ice Beam", "reverse boss order", "ingame time", and "any%". To my knowledge, seven branches is more branches than we have for any other game, and this run, on its own merits, obsoletes none of them. Most obviously, any% and game end glitch are much faster (38:41 and 7:14 respectively), but even 100% items finishes in 1:08:15, and that's sitting through the item chime for every item in the game. You're not causing an uproar, don't worry. I think a lot of the frustration from the people who don't find this entertaining comes from the fact that this same category was submitted roughly a year ago by the same person, and opinions haven't changed very much. Samsara's thesis is still valid though -- this run is a TAS, whether it is published here or not. nymx completed it, used tools, sped through the game, it's a valid TAS. It doesn't need the site's stamp of approval to be a TAS, it doesn't need the site's stamp of approval to be a VOD through nymx's Twitch stream or placed on his YouTube channel. I guess the site's question back to you is, "Why do you think that this category is worth publishing on this site?"
I am still the wizard that did it. "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata <scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Posted: 5/9/2016 7:15 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Schmeman
Joined: 6/8/2015
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Posted: 5/9/2016 7:26 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Invariel
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Arcade TAS of 2023
And your thoughts are appreciated, please make no mistake. You're defending the submission in the forum thread, which is exactly the right thing to do and in the right place to do it. You're asking questions which (hopefully) are being answered by others here; it's a discussion. This is the point of communication, especially when dissenting opinions meet. I want to correct one particular point of contention in your post, though. One that I think is echoed by nymx and some others: You say,
Schmeman wrote:
and whether or not the TAS (in this case) is especially arbitrary, which I think it isn't.
The TAS itself is not arbitrary. It's the goal choice that we are calling arbitrary. In runs that aim for fastest time, we have a clear marker for comparison: we time runs from power on until the last input. This framecount determines time. (With some modifying factor based on language differences, and calculating the difference between NTSC and PAL.) In runs that aim for fastest in-game time, we have a clear marker for comparison: we time runs based on the number that shows up in the final screens. In runs that aim for lowest item percentage, we have a clear marker for comparison: we judge runs based on the number that shows up in the final screens. In runs that aim for 100% of items collected, we have a clear marker for comparison: does the number that shows up in the final screens say 100%? These metrics, in combinations, are used to determine whether one particular run beats another. With 100% Map Completion, there is no (known) in-game way to verify that every map square has been visited, unlike (for example) CastleVania: Symphony of the Night, which tracks and displays exactly this number. This lack of in-game verification is what makes this particular goal arbitrary.
I am still the wizard that did it. "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata <scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Posted: 5/9/2016 7:44 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Schmeman
Joined: 6/8/2015
Posts: 30
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Posted: 5/9/2016 7:56 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Invariel
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Arcade TAS of 2023
The thing about using that argument, " the game does mark these map tiles though, so there is visual confirmation" is that secret areas aren't marked on the map by default. Not even from map rooms (if I am remembering correctly), so (while this isn't likely because the game code has been heavily scrutinized) if there was a room attached to the game that nobody had found, no amount of visual confirmation would say that the map has been 100% visited.
I am still the wizard that did it. "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata <scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Posted: 5/9/2016 8:15 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Schmeman
Joined: 6/8/2015
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Posted: 5/9/2016 8:30 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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feos
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There's no question whether it is arbitrary in itself or not. The question is: Is it arbitrary enough to not publish it as yet another branch? Yes, it is too arbitrary to be published as a separate branch. It wouldn't be so, probably, if there was only 1 published branch of SM at tasvideos. But we try to reduce the amount of branches to only have those that are meaningful to have as a TAS, which means they all represent unique features that can't be seen in other runs, and that the goals of those branches are solid enough. So even if this was submitted before the first "all items" run, the latter would obsolete it, due to being more solid as a goal and having a lot of overlapping content. Yes, this thread is where people can discuss the qualities of the run itself, and what they feel about it. But it won't help if it simply doesn't fit into the site by the rules we have. Everyone also liked the MM9 run which had that cheat to switch weapons. It was reasonable to some people for such a run to be made. But it didn't help, since it didn't fit into the site by the rules. And no, the rules are not set in stone to be obeyed blindly. They simply express some basic principles we all consider the most important. Exceptions happen when the principles are challenged by some fantastic content that those rules wouldn't imagine, but they are extremely rare and obviously stand out in the first place. "GT code + arbitrary code execution" was exceptional. Right here though, it's not an exceptional case.
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.
Posted: 5/9/2016 10:04 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Sniq
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Ingame time any% is arbitrary since there are ways to trick the timer. Both low% tases on the site are obsolete since 13% is new low%, making them arbitrary (my opinion).
Posted: 5/9/2016 10:40 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Invariel
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Arcade TAS of 2023
Sniq, you're right that in-game time is arbitrary because of timer manipulation, but that's also an argument that was made (and the judgment was made in favour of the distinction). As for both low% TASes being obsolete, they aren't because no TAS has been created for 13% anything, but they would be obsoleted by the site's rules if an optimized 13% or lower TAS were submitted and published. (Which is a sentiment that I echoed last time):
Invariel wrote:
two different low% (14%) runs, likely both of which will be obsoleted once a single 13% run is found because they will better meet the goal of low% than either 14% run;
To the best of my knowledge, both of those runs were published as completing the game with the lowest known percentage of items score that didn't involve ACE or otherwise breaking the game. Some investigation into the forum discussions surrounding those particular runs (or goal choices) would likely result in some very interesting discussion about why we need two low% runs on the site in the first place, and "these are categories that realtime speedrunners care about" vs. "but we're not realtime speedrunners, we're TASers, and we shouldn't be held to their standards".
I am still the wizard that did it. "On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata <scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
Posted: 5/9/2016 2:44 PM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Memory
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I have yet to finish watching the TAS in question (though I don't know if I will be able to because of my gamer instincts screaming every time it enters a room with an item and immediately turns around) but I don't think this site runs on a system of precedent like a court. Just because it was decided years ago that such and such goal choices would be accepted for publication back then, it doesn't mean that such and such goal choices would be ok today. However removing previously accepted branches without obsoleting them in some way would not be fair to the authors of those publications. As someone who isn't really big on Super Metroid, it appears to me to have a ton of branches. It definitely seems reasonable to compare the entertainment value of one branch to that of another.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Posted: 5/9/2016 7:31 PM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Cpadolf
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Definitely a big improvement on the last run, both in technique and style. The general level of optimization seems pretty good, though with questionable spots. I primarily wonder about some potential route changes though, like doing Kraid early and picking up Varia, which would make Kraids area slower and waste some time on the Varia animation, but speed up norfair due to lower energy requirements, and allow you to skip the old tourian E-tank you pick up early (as well as only visiting that room once). Would probably speed up some other stuff on route to Gravity suit as you'd have more energy for damageboosts. And picking up either Spazer or picking Wave earlier would speed up some stuff as well, and possibly let you skip a couple more missile packs and the missile station refill in Maridia. I also wonder why you de-equip Ice Beam before LN. There may have been some place where that gained you time but it also wastes some time on GT and Ridley, as well as in the room with the super to the right of the old tourian escape shaft. Anyway, I thought this was an entertaining run, and I do think the category has some merit in that it creates conditions in many rooms that require creative and interesting movement to clear properly, as well as showing of a couple of areas you never see otherwise (with the drawback of entering all the useless rooms where you immediately have to exit again). In the end I don't think it's enough to warrant a publication here, but that shouldn't really matter much anyway.
Agare Bagare Kopparslagare
Posted: 5/9/2016 8:39 PM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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Noxxa
They/Them
Moderator, Expert player (4109)
Joined: 8/14/2009
Posts: 4089
Location: The Netherlands
Exotic platforms TASer of 2018 Exotic platforms TAS of 2018 Exotic platforms TASer of 2017 Exotic platforms TAS of 2017 Exotic platforms TAS of 2017 Exotic platforms TASer of 2016 Exotic platforms TAS of 2016 Gameboy TASer of 2013
I figure I'll give my take on this as well. This is a pretty good improvement. It's clear nymx, EternisedDragon and everyone else paid good attention to the issues of the last submission. Optimization looks pretty good overall (although some users still found some sketchy areas), there is actual relevant information in the submission text now, there is a bit less copied input (although some parts like cpadolf's first half of Ceres are still not appropriately credited or mentioned), and we get to see (and read about) a few new fun tricks as usual. However, the greatest issue - the one I rejected last year's run for - has gone completely unaddressed. This run was received slightly better due to improved optimization and the other aforementioned things, but the viewer response is still not looking good. The vote ratings went up from 33% last year to about 40% for this submission, which is still way too little. The category still is seen as poor or arbitrary by many people for many different reasons. Some dislike the fact that the run doesn't collect all items along the way; others just find traversing rooms for the sake of traversing rooms a pointless or arbitrary goal in general, considering the game internally does not keep track of the number or percentage of rooms visited. Either way, compared to all the other branches this game has (any%, 100%, low%, RBO, ACE, and then some), this category falls flat and is just considered to be not very interesting. The bottom line is - it's just considered a niche and uninteresting category here. I'm sure there's an audience for this run among Super Metroid enthusiast communities/sites like Deer Tier, but for TASVideos this category just does not cut 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.
Posted: 5/10/2016 2:00 AM
(Edited: 7/5/2022 3:08 AM)
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TASVideosGrue
They/Them
Joined: 10/1/2008
Posts: 2785
Location: The dark corners of the TASVideos server
om, nom, nom... blech!
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