I can put it another way. There's a difference between zero and null. Zero is a valid number, null is absence of any valid entity. So, regarding completion, we have any% (fastest completion), 100% (full completion), 0% (lowest completion), but do we want to have null% (completion is for pussies) competing with those?
The problem is clearly and unambiguously defining the difference between any% and null%.
— We can't go by run length (absolute, relative, doesn't matter) because it would be an arbitrary variable which will bring more problems than it will solve.
— We probably can't go by glitch type or method, because in some cases the glitch in question is only triggerable 20-30 minutes into the run, and in others right at the start screen. This is arguable, though.
— We can't go by the amount of skipped content because 1) every speedrun skips some; 2) it's impossible to gauge precisely; 3) it's impossible to draw the line most people would agree with.
It might be that, regardless of the accepted publication/categorization paradigm, it will have to be decided manually by the judges, if only because every other mechanism is even less reliable.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
On the other hand, we still accept both any% and full completion, "no completion at all whatsoever" is not what one would be looking for when he comes to a speedrun site.
But given that runs that skip large parts of games (eg. entire levels) are acceptable, where do you draw the line? If a run plays the first level of the game for a couple of seconds and then glitches to the end of the game (with the same glitch that would be usable right from startup), would that become acceptable?
(What if the glitch has to be performed on the first level of the game for it to work? It becomes even more complicated. Technically part of the game has been played. A really, really small part, but still.)
Yeah, there are cases where this thing can be used throughout all the run, that is otherwise completely normal. But once you have absolute control over a game, it doesn't matter what you do with it, it's kinda out of serious competition:
#4252: Masterjun's SNES Super Mario World "11 exits" in 08:07.53
See the judgment note there.
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 think that if such Vault acceptance rules were to be devised, they would probably have to deal with the glitches themselves, rather than the amount of gameplay in the run.
You know what? It all sounds like we'd have to postpone this until the actual runs are submitted (not sooner than in half a year, it kinda depends on whenever I implement the feature and some other stuff I've planned).
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.
If it were up to me, and me alone, I would use the "heavy glitch abuse" tag as an umbrella term for RAM and save data corruption, ACE, generic hardware glitches like the DPCM, and other instances of (near-)total control originating from glitch abuse. And then I'd just make all the runs made that way completely separate from the rest of the runs so that the two groups never overlap in obsoletion chains. :p
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
If it were up to me, and me alone, I would use the "heavy glitch abuse" tag as an umbrella term for RAM and save data corruption, ACE, generic hardware glitches like the DPCM, and other instances of (near-)total control originating from glitch abuse. And then I'd just make all the runs made that way completely separate from the rest of the runs so that the two groups never overlap in obsoletion chains. :p
That doesn't sound like something that I would furiously disagree with.
I can put it another way. There's a difference between zero and null. Zero is a valid number, null is absence of any valid entity. So, regarding completion, we have any% (fastest completion), 100% (full completion), 0% (lowest completion), but do we want to have null% (completion is for pussies) competing with those?
The problem is clearly and unambiguously defining the difference between any% and null%.
— We can't go by run length (absolute, relative, doesn't matter) because it would be an arbitrary variable which will bring more problems than it will solve.
— We probably can't go by glitch type or method, because in some cases the glitch in question is only triggerable 20-30 minutes into the run, and in others right at the start screen. This is arguable, though.
— We can't go by the amount of skipped content because 1) every speedrun skips some; 2) it's impossible to gauge precisely; 3) it's impossible to draw the line most people would agree with.
It might be that, regardless of the accepted publication/categorization paradigm, it will have to be decided manually by the judges, if only because every other mechanism is even less reliable.
Once again, this branch of the conversation (I'm sorry) seems to be heading into categorization territory.
On the one hand, we have numerical categorizations: 100%, any%, low%, 0%, which look at some measurable content of game completion. In Super Metroid, it is those categories (minus 0%); in Super Mario World, it is 96 exits and 11 exits.
On the other hand, we have restrictions: glitchless, no major glitches, major glitches but not ACE, ACE, and the recently demonstrated DPCM glitch.
We also have sub-categories (or speed/entertainment tradeoffs): Warpless (a routing thing which, in some cases could be likened to a percentage category), deathless (potentially a routing thing), pacifist (an entertainment thing), and so on.
What the Vault specifically allows is 100% and any%, and the Vault is only considered after a game fails to be entertaining enough to the audience to be in Moons. There are no "direct-to-Vault" masterpieces, as much as comment threads like to suppose and joke that there are.
There is definitely an argument to be made about there being "too many runs" for a given game, but that discussion falls under categorization and not the definition of a "speedrun", which is really just a blanket term applied to attempting to beat a game with less time spent than anyone else in your chosen category and under your preferred restrictions. Nobody debates (for example) that 100% Map Completion is a category in Super Metroid, but what people debate here, on this site, is whether or not that category is worth publishing.
There is also a discussion to be had about what constitutes a minor or major glitch, and whether glitches should be reclassified as non-TAS players are able to more precisely and accurately perform them, or as their effects as they pertain to the game become better understood.
Where I feel there shouldn't be a discussion at all is in whether ACE (or DPCM glitching) should obsolete a glitched or glitchless run, as those restrictions define how quickly the game is going to be beaten (or exploited, in some cases), and thus puts those records in different categories. The site has sometimes deemed that one category can obsolete something in another category, but to my recollection ACE has yet to obsolete gameplay by default. There have been documented cases where ACE has obsoleted gameplay, but those were not decisions made arbitrarily by the judges, and instead came out of intense discussion on the fora by the community.
Talking specifically to the distinction between 0% and null%, where null% is defined as "completion is for pussies" and 0% is "lowest completion", the distinction tries to make a good argument for a demo tier, but it misses a critical point - a null% run doesn't complete the game. A null% run, by its own definition ("completion is for pussies") has its completion timer continue to increase until someone kills the run because the end condition of the game hasn't been met. Would I like to see null% runs showcased on the site? Absolutely. But they would not fall under the umbrella of "speedrun", as the game is never completed. Should the work that goes into these runs be promoted? Absolutely! But, again, they don't demonstrate a speedrun of the game being played to completion.
As was recently demonstrated in Super Mario Bros. 3, the input "exploit(s) the workaround code to avoid the conflict between the DPCM and the game controller" (thanks, ange_, on IRC) and jumps from the title screen to the end credits. While this doesn't follow the conventional definition of 'play', it does follow the definition of 'superplay', as set out by our site. The game is turned on, input happens, the game's completion state is shown. Pressing buttons as quickly as possible, thanks to sub-frame input is what "a god player would do". Should that run obsolete 100%, or any%, or low%? No. Should it obsolete ACE? Probably, because the setup is different, but the end goal is the same - get the game into a state where it accepts controller input as code (instead of as input within the defined input handler subroutines) and jump to the ending scene. Is it null%? No, as it completes the actual game.
Conversely, as was demonstrated at AGDQ 2014, programming Pong and Snake into Super Mario World is an example of null%, as the game is not completed. It is reprogrammed into two other games (with less presence on the site, mind you) which are then played (and not even completed!). Should that be showcased on the site? I would argue that yes, it should. But not as a speedrun. This is where feos' constant request for a demo tier comes into play, except that it shouldn't be a tier because tiering implies stratiation and these aren't above or below Moons or Vault, though 'demo' is probably the correct term for demonstrating a particular vector of attack. That these runs shouldn't be tiered is important because it also suggests that they shouldn't obsolete runs that exist in the existing tiers, though they might still need to obsolete each other, when faster ways of deploying the payload using a particular vector are realized.
What does this have to do with speedruns? Really very little, except to note that people are interested in these particular ways of approaching games, but they shouldn't scare people away from looking for more conventional ways of playing through a game. ACE isn't likely to obsolete 100%, and glitchless isn't likely to be obsoleted by major glitches unless the resultant submissions both end up in the vault. (Which would say something about the game or the quality of its glitches if neither of those categories can make it to Moons.) The obsoletion fairy isn't lurking around the corner to offer fewer and fewer ways to complete games until only one game exists (that is, in turn, ACE'd into any other game you want and then beaten quickly).
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
As was recently demonstrated in Super Mario Bros. 3, the input "exploit(s) the workaround code to avoid the conflict between the DPCM and the game controller" (thanks, ange_, on IRC) and jumps from the title screen to the end credits. While this doesn't follow the conventional definition of 'play', it does follow the definition of 'superplay', as set out by our site. The game is turned on, input happens, the game's completion state is shown. Pressing buttons as quickly as possible, thanks to sub-frame input is what "a god player would do". Should that run obsolete 100%, or any%, or low%? No. Should it obsolete ACE? Probably, because the setup is different, but the end goal is the same - get the game into a state where it accepts controller input as code (instead of as input within the defined input handler subroutines) and jump to the ending scene. Is it null%? No, as it completes the actual game.
First, "game end glitch" is considered any% over here (even though we retired the term from the site definitions), because it's "fastest completion". Also, "game end glitch" using arbitrary code has obsoleted non-ACE "major glitch" category at leasttwice, based on the first point, as long as all of them aimed for speed.
Second, I didn't mean "game hasn't reached its 'completed' state" when suggesting null%, I meant the game has never been played, it hasn't even entered the first level, where the actual gameplay starts, it just skipped to the end right from its start hands down. This is technically impressive, but it does not do anything at all impressive to the viewer. Even ACE SMB3 and SMW got some appreciation when people realized it can be done by a human too, though it's still not that entertaining, yet it still has something to watch. Remember?
Wiki: WelcomeToTASVideos wrote:
We make these movies because they are entertaining to watch
In the DPCM glitch case, there's nothing to look at, the game doesn't even get close to when the player starts his progression. The credits are legitimately triggered, if you look it it technically, but there's no progression that is associated with completion by nearly every person who knows about games. That is the scenario I called null%.
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.
and because we are curious how far a game can be pushed. The process of creating them is also a form of problem-solving and challenge to our intellect and ingenuity.
feos wrote:
Second, I didn't mean "game hasn't reached its 'completed' state" when suggesting null%, I meant the game has never been played, it hasn't even entered the first level, where the actual gameplay starts, it just skipped to the end right from its start hands down.
You're applying the RTA definition of "game start" to a TAS, when you should be applying the TAS definition of "game start", which is "power on".
Wiki: MovieRules wrote:
The movie must begin from console power-on
feos wrote:
Also, "game end glitch" using arbitrary code has obsoleted non-ACE "major glitch" category at leasttwice, based on the first point, as long as all of them aimed for speed.
Invariel wrote:
There have been documented cases where ACE has obsoleted gameplay, but those were not decisions made arbitrarily by the judges, and instead came out of intense discussion on the fora by the community.
Yes, I covered that.
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
You're applying the RTA definition of "game start" to a TAS, when you should be applying the TAS definition of "game start", which is "power on".
Wiki: MovieRules wrote:
The movie must begin from console power-on
This is art, you can't tell me where I should consider it started. This is a sport, hence all the obsoletion thing, but it's also art, so it must appeal to our aesthetic taste as well.
Even for a sport, we don't consider better menuing an improvement, gameplay itself must be improved in the first place. Does it not mean gameplay is what we want to see TASed? We want to see unintuitive solutions applied to that, this is why this "problem-solving" thing meets so much feedback and motivates people to continue their efforts.
Invariel wrote:
feos wrote:
Also, "game end glitch" using arbitrary code has obsoleted non-ACE "major glitch" category at leasttwice, based on the first point, as long as all of them aimed for speed.
Invariel wrote:
There have been documented cases where ACE has obsoleted gameplay, but those were not decisions made arbitrarily by the judges, and instead came out of intense discussion on the fora by the community.
Yes, I covered that.
My point is that it's the current standard, and it will happen as many times as needed. "Should this 'game end glitch' that uses ACE obsolete that 'game end glitch' without ACE, or be a separate branch" is not a question anymore. It was published separately once, with "GT code/game end glitch" run, but only due to its superior entertainment value. It was obsoleted by a regular GEG afterwards anyway.
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.
While I would like there to be runs of Mario 3 that showcase gameplay on the site, I have to disagree that the DCPM glitch run is "not entertaining to watch" or that there is "nothing to look at." There is absolutely something to look at: A real console turning on with a Mario 3 cartridge in it and instantly displaying the credits. No one had ever seen that before! Far from being "nothing" to watch, it was amazing to watch, and I'm so glad I got to see the reveal live.
I do agree that if it turns out an enormous class of games can all be beaten the exact same way, I would rather just see one video and a list of all the other games it works for.
And certainly this will get more confusing if more incremental examples are found, for instance, a DCPM-style glitch that for some reason only works after playing one full level.
I think it's ok to let the judges draw reasonable lines about what kinds of run are too similar to existing runs to publish, as long as they accept at least one good example of any such run. Accepting it to a demo category sounds ok too, I have no problem with that, though I do think a note/link should be placed on any affected games' any% pages to the effect that this is not really the fastest known completion.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
While I would like there to be runs of Mario 3 that showcase gameplay on the site, I have to disagree that the DCPM glitch run is "not entertaining to watch" or that there is "nothing to look at." There is absolutely something to look at: A real console turning on with a Mario 3 cartridge in it and instantly displaying the credits. No one had ever seen that before! Far from being "nothing" to watch, it was amazing to watch, and I'm so glad I got to see the reveal live.
This is not about live demonstrations at a charity marathons. This is about runs (and videos made from those runs) published here.
When you watch a video here, there is no live audience, there is no live commentary, there is no real console nor real cartridge, there is no audience reaction, there is no applause. There is just a 10-or-so second video that briefly shows the start menu and then the end screen.
If that becomes common, then it may well turn out to be quite boring. This can become especially problematic if that's the only run published for that particular game.
The question is, can it even be considered a "speedrun"? Should it be classified as a "speedrun"? It's certainly not playing the game through.
Is a speedrun equivalent to an encode of a speedrun? Or are, say, the values that appear in memory part of the speedrun too?
I think you can easily make the argument that with these game-end-glitch runs, much of the reason they're boring is that the encode is focusing on what appears onscreen and through the speakers, but those aren't what the run is actually focusing on, and thus don't give a good view of what's going on.
I think you can easily make the argument that with these game-end-glitch runs, much of the reason they're boring is that the encode is focusing on what appears onscreen and through the speakers, but those aren't what the run is actually focusing on, and thus don't give a good view of what's going on.
I think that the fundamental problem is that most people want to see the games played through with astonishing skill (superhumanly so in the case of tool-assisted speedruns). That's the whole idea of speedruns in the first place.
If there is no gameplay of any kind, that kind of defeats the whole idea.
With some unassisted speedruns of some games there exist "glitchless" categories (Ocarina of Time being a good example), because there is demand for such runs. I don't think we should dismiss this outright, even though we are using tool assistance.
Well, someone watching me play, say, Pokémon HeartGold just by watching the screen wouldn't see much of what's going on, because I'm moving around in RNG space in addition to moving on the map. (I play on hardware, but have an effective memory watch set up via doing tests every now and then to determine the current RNG value.) Having a display of my current RNG goal and the current RNG seed would make it a lot easier to figure out what's going on.
Or as a simpler example, there are FPS runs where runners spend all the time looking at the floor to minimize lag, even if there are no glitches exploited. The encode makes it very unclear what's happening there. The "correct" way to view the run would likely be with a camhack.
Yeah I have to just disagree with Warp that a speedrun is fundamentally about watching the screen. A huge amount of my enjoyment of speedruns is conceptual - I can't tell you how many times I've loved the submission text of a TAS but had no interest in watching the video, or just skimmed it.
Sometimes speedruns look really cool, but sometimes they are really cool in other ways, and the value is in the fact that the author has understood a system, exploited it in a novel way, and communicated that effectively to the public. Often the most effective way to communicate it includes a video of the screen, but sometimes that's not sufficient, and other times it's not necessary.
A warb degombs the brangy. Your gitch zanks and leils the warb.
Yeah I have to just disagree with Warp that a speedrun is fundamentally about watching the screen. A huge amount of my enjoyment of speedruns is conceptual - I can't tell you how many times I've loved the submission text of a TAS but had no interest in watching the video, or just skimmed it.
I understand that perfectly, but you'd have to agree that when talking about the public at large, the majority of people are more interested in seeing the game being played. The novelty of having a game being hacked (usually by mostly non-visual means) wears off pretty quickly, especially if most runs end up looking similar due to it.
Again, I'm not saying that runs that hack the game should be banned. I'm just suggesting that there's a demand for "glitchless" runs, and perhaps we should listen to that demand. We should also consider what are the sensible requirements for the Vault tier, given that most games will only have one, at most two, runs in existence.
Well, someone watching me play, say, Pokémon HeartGold just by watching the screen wouldn't see much of what's going on, because I'm moving around in RNG space in addition to moving on the map. (I play on hardware, but have an effective memory watch set up via doing tests every now and then to determine the current RNG value.) Having a display of my current RNG goal and the current RNG seed would make it a lot easier to figure out what's going on.
Or as a simpler example, there are FPS runs where runners spend all the time looking at the floor to minimize lag, even if there are no glitches exploited. The encode makes it very unclear what's happening there. The "correct" way to view the run would likely be with a camhack.
I agree with all of this. If there is some way to demonstrate (in the encode) what is going on outside of the viewer's ken, this might improve viewer satisfaction for non-conventional ways of running through the game -- the recent Wolfenstein submission (publication?) had a helpful top-view minimap that made the action easier to follow, and I have always enjoyed/appreciated input display and Lua to display RAM information.
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
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
If a BIOS-level vulnerability were found in a console like the 3DO or ColecoVision (both of which make heavy use of BIOS calls), and it allowed for ACE in all games, how would it be handled under the site rules?
If a BIOS-level vulnerability were found in a console like the 3DO or ColecoVision (both of which make heavy use of BIOS calls), and it allowed for ACE in all games, how would it be handled under the site rules?
You mean like this?
No idea what would happen, but it'll be quite interesting, especially since some games don't even have a simple flag to determine if it's an end state or not.
Joined: 10/28/2013
Posts: 130
Location: United States
jlun2 wrote:
goldenband wrote:
If a BIOS-level vulnerability were found in a console like the 3DO or ColecoVision (both of which make heavy use of BIOS calls), and it allowed for ACE in all games, how would it be handled under the site rules?
Well, that's certainly the inspiration, but I'm talking about something where a console's entire library could potentially be vulnerable to the exact same attack. My understanding is that the PCM bug only affects games that use the PCM channel and have a specific type of controller-reading routine.
On the 3DO I'm not aware of any retail release that wasn't sandboxed inside the 3DO BIOS, so a (theoretical) vulnerability in the BIOS would potentially allow for every game in the console's library to be completed in the exact same way: ACE, jump to credits or equivalent, done.
(I'd think the same would be true if a vulnerability were somehow found in the startup splash screens for Game Boy, Neo Geo, Genesis w/TMSS, etc. Obviously that's extremely unlikely, but...)
