Too bad you don't get to participate in battles a la Archon.
Numerous videos have been made of of Battle Chess aiming for quick checkmates (speed). For the most part, however, they have not been accepted because chess is a board game; and board games are generally unacceptable for vault. Based on rejections, most (if not all) of these submissions weren't entertaining enough to attain Moon tier.
Hopefully we can break that streak. This video is a simple playaround that demonstrates the battle animations for all the different game-pieces against each of the others. The only exception being King vs King as that is not possible.
The game board is set up individually for each piece type to quickly run through the opponents pieces.
This was a very simple and rapid TAS to set up. Time was not heavily considered and optimizations of movement may be possible, but speed isn't really the point.
This game also has a PC port with moderately better graphics (including blood during the battles, resulting in some of the deaths making more sense). I'm still new enough to TASing that I've not yet experimented with PC game TASes. If someone were to mimic this TAS using that version, it would look better and possibly be more entertaining. Until that happens (or until I figure it out), hopefully this video will qualify for moon tier.
It's no summer Hollywood blockbuster, but hopefully it's at least entertaining enough to be considered 'interesting.'
Noxxa: This is a run that does not aim for speed, is far from optimal in that sense, and it also fails to provide entertainment or anything notable in the way the game is played. The category choice was not received well at all.
This run fails to qualify as either a speedrun or superplay; as such, it fails to qualify for publication on this site. Rejecting.
[20:20] <raekuul> yeah, regarding Battle Chess, there's a few... words... I can say about that.
[20:20] <SpikedMuffin> raekuul: http://tasvideos.org/GameResources/NES/BattleChess/Submissions.html
[20:21] <raekuul> 1) By far it would be better to use either DOS or Amiga -> No scene transitions, faster setups, faster movements
[20:22] <raekuul> 2) It would be more entertaining to see this rendered as an actual game of chess instead of just a series of board demos
[20:22] <raekuul> 3) With the layout chosen for Knight, it's marginally faster to use blue for the winning team since the red knight has to turn around to move downwards
[20:23] <raekuul> granted, since every piece has a different checkmate animation point 2 can be rendered somewhat moot, but still...
[20:24] <raekuul> If you're going to make a chess playaround, make it a playaround.
Haha, what a weird goal.
I'm guessing you're going through all possible capture animations (6x6-1=35 of them)?
I think this TAS is improvable (in terms of speed) by having both sides do captures with each of their moves.
Ok, so....actual comment time.
This category doesn't really make sense. I would assume it's like 100%, except it's with battle animations. It would be like doing a Kingdom Hearts run, but only staying in one area and grinding until you can show every possible battle animation. Once you do that, you stop playing and just end the TAS.
Sounds pretty dumb, huh?
Giving this a No. Not only is this not a legitimate category, Battle Chess is also a really boring game. If you do another Chess TAS, stick to any% and do it on a game that doesn't put me to sleep.
effort on the first draft means less effort on any draft thereafter
- some loser
just make a youtube video with interactions,this is no speedrun
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
I have quite a different argument against the category.
In general, we consider TASes and TAS encodes to be fair use, because they're adding a lot of value to what the developers designed; the value in a TAS isn't really in things like the game's music or graphics or plot, but rather the way in which the emulated player completes the game (or performs some other goal). TASes aiming for speed often use unusual strategies, glitches, and other things the developers didn't expect. Likewise, tool-assisted playarounds are normally showing off what's possible in the engine and what sort of ridiculous unexpected results you can produce, rather than just a library of easter eggs.
The entertainment value from this run is basically concentrated in part of the game designed by the game's developers – it's a showcase of the animations that the game's artists programmed in – rather than anything that comes from the TASer's side. (In fact, its goals intentionally deny any attempt to optimize it; there's not much interest in the strategy used. This seems like a category that *could* lead to an interesting optimization problem: what sequence of chessboards allows for the fastest X-captures-Y moves for every legal combination of X and Y? But by denying this, it's clear that the focus is on the game's assets, not in the strategy.)
As such, I'm not at all convinced that this run is legal to encode. Even if it is, it's intentionally denying the spirit that makes a TAS a TAS.
(In a way, I'm disappointed that the run is being judged as unentertaining on other grounds, because this is a pretty interesting philosophical question about what makes a TAS a TAS.)
I think the most damning comment I can make about this TAS is this:
Since making the temp encode, my desktop computer has actively refused to run at full speed.
(No, that's not actually the fault of the TAS, but it's too good of a coincidence to pass up)
I really respect the comments and philosophical questions raised by ais523. I also appreciate that he/she is willing to share his/her perspective. If this submission serves no purpose but to have drawn out these questions/comments/concerns about the deeper philosophical positions on TASing games, then I feel that it was a worthwhile submission regardless of the ultimate decision on the video.
That said, I have a minor issue with your suggestion that TAS videos have to somehow exhibit or exploit things about a game that the developers didn't want or didn't expect.
Some of us newer (and likely some older) players aren't as experienced with computers and/or programming as others in the community may be; yet we still have an interest in this hobby. As an example, I'm in healthcare and haven't deeply studied software and computers. I just enjoy video games and enjoy the challenge of TASing. It's essentially a puzzle to me.
For those of us who don't understand the various intricacies of the technology or aren't versed in coding, simply completing a game as absolutely fast as we find possible using TAS techniques is exciting enough of an accomplishment even if nothing was attained outside of the developers' intents.
Even if/when my TAS attempts are rejected by the community, I still feel a sense of accomplishment in something I approach as a hobby, because I've still done something I would never have been able to achieve while playing a game normally.
I'm simply suggesting that, as a community, we guard against potentially alienating current or future members by requiring that submissions perform something beyond developers intent.
Again I appreciate that ais523 shared his/her thoughts. It's communication than strengthens what we do. Just look at how many submissions have resulted from collaboration for proof.
On a slightly unrelated note: I personally would love to learn more about the technological side of coding, video games, and TASing. But I like to do things methodically, and I honestly have no idea where or how to begin.
All battle animations can be achieved in 14:16.81.
Link to video
For those who prefer not to watch the video:
- It is possible to perform this using only two board setups. May be possible to perform with just one but I didn't want to check.
- Fastest animations mostly occur by having Blue capture down and left. Since we are getting both players to capture, Red is given Knight, Rook, and Bishop captures as well as some odd captures here and there.
- This movie probably isn't optimal.
- The sequence of board setups, take backs, and moves are as follows:
(setup board)
1 Nxb4#
(take back)
1 ... hxg2#
(take back)
1 Rxa7#
(take back)
1 ... Qxg2#
(take back)
1 Bxb7#
(setup board)
1 ... gxf6
2 Nxg6 fxe5
3 Bexd5 exd4
4 Bxc4 Qxg6
5 Nxg5 Qxf5
6 Bxb3 Qxe4
7 Bxa2 Nxa2
8 Rxg1 Qxd3+
9 Kxd3 dxc3
10 Rxf1 Kxc7
11 Rxe1 Kxc6
12 Rxd1 Nxd1
13 Kxc2 Kxb5
In reply to DrD2k9:
In this case, I think you can make the TASing challenge here considerably more interesting by trying to optimize the run's strategy for speed (which is what almost every experienced TASer here immediately thought of doing; you can see FractalFusion's attempt to optimize it just above, and at least one TASer on IRC didn't understand the concept of not optimizing the parts of your run that aren't part of the category for speed).
You said that you see TASing as a puzzle, and that's something I very much agree with; seeing how people solve the puzzle of what they're aiming to do in their run is one of my main interest in watching TASes (and incidentally, the reason why I value good submission text as much as a good run). "How do I set up a chessboard to allow as many combinations of capturing piece and captured piece to occur as fast as possible" is a puzzle, and it's one that doesn't really naturally occur to chess players. As such, it's an interesting puzzle which probably hasn't been fully explored yet.
Obviously, the reason why this puzzle is interesting is "about" Battle Chess in a way; in regular chess players have no real reason to care about which piece is capturing (unless the capture places the piece in a position to be captured back again, but that's more about caring about moving to an attacked square than it is about the fact that the move is a capture), whereas in Battle Chess there's an amusing animation that accompanies a capture and depends on the identities of the capturing and captured pieces. The developers most likely intended Battle Chess to model regular chess, and even though the rules are exactly the same, this extra cosmetic feature has changed the motivation of the players (in this case, it's inspired you to attempt to demonstrate something that's completely uninteresting in regular chess, and some other players to try to optimize the demonstration). It's this sort of thing that I'm talking about when I'm talking about going beyond the developer intent; it's adding an angle to the game that the developers likely didn't realise was there.
So I guess the reason I'm so taken aback by the run – almost offended, in a way – is that the category choice (of not caring about anything but the cutscene collection, and in particular not caring about the optimization of the route) kind-of negates the idea behind the run. As currently written, the run is about showing off the cutscenes themselves and deriving entertainment value from that; this is something that's fairly clearly placed into the game intentionally by the developers, and an expected way to play. It's also incredibly easy, with no real puzzle involved, to simply see every cutscene (it's an obvious goal for most casual players; it's one of the first things I noticed when I started playing the game casually, well before I came to TASvideos or even knew what speedrunning was, although even then I made it more of a puzzle by trying to do it against the AI with no setting up of boards involved). On the other hand, the puzzle involved in trying to optimize it is fairly interesting, which is why it's so disheartening that you disregarded it.
Note, however, that it's only fairly interesting; this sort of run has a tendency to get rejected in practice. A good parallel is this movie, which was the result of weeks of work trying to solve another puzzle that's embedded into a game and probably unexpected by the developers (in this case, what the shortest stroke, in terms of time needed to draw it, is for each of the 100 puzzles included in Polarium; this is something I basically didn't consider while playing the game casually). The puzzle behind this was really interesting, involving multiple different computer search programs to be sure we had the right answer, and I enjoyed working on it even though eventually it turned out that other users had better solutions (and thus my work wasn't part of the final result). The end result, though, simply isn't fun to watch, and was only saved from rejection by the fact that it's technically a 100% speed record and thus allowed in the Vault.
I was hoping for Blue's Pawn to make it all the way down! What a let down this video was! :D just kidding, PC version has vastly better visuals so I vote no for this.
It's disappointing the game has no cutscenes for Checkmate involving the King and the unit that placed it in Check, with nowhere to retreat due to other units.
ais523
I fully understand your position and disappointment regarding this particular video of Battle Chess. However, I think you completely missed the point I was trying to make in my previous post.
My comments on not requiring a TAS to go beyond developer intent were not meant for JUST this particular video, but as a general approach to all games. For example, this awesome run of The Simpsons (which qualified for Star tier) doesn't utilize any glitches or use the game engine beyond developer intent.
http://tasvideos.org/1613M.html
Even the very rapid bonus stages are still within the developer intent of finishing them as quickly as possible. The only argument you could make over developer intent was how often co-op attacks are used. Even that would be speculative of what the developers expected.
I don't know if it was your intent or not, but I feel quite berated by your comments. While I normally appreciate constructive criticism and am encouraged to improve; your words are exactly the discouraging comments I was referring to when I said we should be cautious against alienating new players.
I'm sorry if my work has somehow "offended" and "disheartened" you. I guess i'm just not as spectacular as yourself when it comes to TASing games and choosing goals. Then again, I find it interesting that you have so much of a problem with the goal choice of my video, when your own submission was rejected for goal choice (even if it was an attempt at an April Fools joke).
If it wasn't obvious from my other posts, I'm new to this. I'm going to make mistakes, and I'm going to submit things that seem optimized to me but may be far from it due to my limited knowledge. If the fact that I'm new and an imperfect human is somehow offensive or disheartening to you, you're arrogant and have forgotten that you were new to this at one time as well.
To anyone else who decides to read this:
I understand that there may have been more optimized ways of doing this particular video. Please forgive my inexperience.
Seeing that there are 100% 'No' votes at the moment, I don't really expect this video to get published; nor do I care if it does or not. It was a learning exercise for me. I'm trying to improve my skills, and making mistakes is part of that.
DrD2k9: First off, hi, thanks for submitting an input file to the site. Please don't be discouraged by the negative reaction - there are many reasons that people seem to be voting against your particular submission, and I would like to try to explain why in a way that doesn't offend anyone.
Secondly, please note the "edit" button that is always available to you if your post is the most recent. That's there so that you don't double post, which, while not something we frown upon here, is general Netiquette.
Thirdly, the point of this post:
You seem to be misconstruing ais523's comments as insults when they are actually observations and criticisms. Instead of repeating all of the words here and creating a bloated post, I just want to drill down on one point: your goal choice. Seeing all combinations of kills in the game is, as has been pointed out, something that a YouTube video might showcase. Similarly, it's something that the developers of the game added to chess that makes it, as a game, stand out against all other chess games. There is no superhuman skill involved in making a Rook capture another Rook to tick off that particular combination in the "captured" matrix, especially when you set up the board beforehand.
Therefore, the other S in TAS must be considered - superplay is out, speedrun is in.
And that turns checking all of the boxes in the matrix into a separate kind of puzzle - how do you tick all of the boxes the fastest? The solution you present gets the job done in roughly 18.5 minutes. Then FractalFusion comes along and solves the problem in just over 14.25 minutes. Thus you are losing on the speedrun aspect as well. That happens when something gets into the submission queue. People go over what you have done, comment and criticize, and there's a resolution.
Nobody's words in this thread have been intended to hurt you. None of them have called your skill as a TASer into question. They have talked exclusively about the submission's goal choice and some disappointment about aiming for the goal while ignoring time, and one member demonstrated how to achieve the goal in less time.
Finally, I want to address these directly:
DrD2k9 wrote:
On a slightly unrelated note: I personally would love to learn more about the technological side of coding, video games, and TASing. But I like to do things methodically, and I honestly have no idea where or how to begin.
To that, we have a Game Resources section on the site that contains a lot of interesting information about TASing, and there are many books about how to learn Java, Python, C, and other languages if you want to start thinking about programming, even casually. Personally, writing your own code and deciding how to structure data helps to inform about how other people might structure their data, which helps when you're using RAM Search to track down memory addresses. "It seems reasonable to store the player's X position closely to the Y position," is definitely something I've said, and it has helped trim down search results. People on this forum are generally friendly and helpful if you ask informed questions, so please don't hesitate to use them.
DrD2k9 wrote:
Even if/when my TAS attempts are rejected by the community, I still feel a sense of accomplishment in something I approach as a hobby, because I've still done something I would never have been able to achieve while playing a game normally.
This is true - you did the thing, and nobody can take away from you the fact that you did the thing. This is not an attempt at sarcasm, this is an honest statement. You tried, you contributed, you put in the hours. The next time you try to TAS something, you will have some skills, some knowledge, and some awareness of potential pitfalls; you can only improve from here.
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
Opie, making TASes just to practice isn't something anyone has a problem with. I'd suggest simply making runs, and showing them in the relevant forums, or on a YouTube channel, and not submitting them, you could try TASing games TASed by others too to see how close you can get.
Good luck and don't get disheartened, everyone has to start at the bottom.
I'm sorry, but even tough my quality standards are very flexible, I just can't find this movie entertaining in any way. While I appreciate the effort, I think that the voting has to be purely decided on the basis of how much you find entertaining the resulting video, and not the technical stuff behind it, which should only used to consider how much optimized is the run. So voting no.
It also seems to me that this movie isn't suitable for any tier, since the lowest tier, the Vault, is for speedruns only. I think the only way to make an acceptable movie out of this game is to exploit some glitch that allows to beat the game ridiculously quick.
The issue here is that the goal itself is quite arbitrary and does not offer much in the way of entertainment to justify it
This TAS may be useful for those curious in seeing all of the game's battle animations, but its not the sort of thing that gets published on this site, even in the vault
This could have actually made it into the vault if the goal wasn't so arbitrary. A more acceptable form of TAS in terms of this game would be a speedrun that could incorporate many of the unique battle animations, but because the run itself is 14 minutes of chess, well, it's just not the sort of thing the judges would promote as a TAS showcase.
Maybe, maybe if this was done with flawless optimization, it might get by in a future submission but the niche speedrun choice of "all battle animations" hurt this run more than anything.
1 Nxb4#
(take back)
1 ... hxg2#
(take back)
1 Rxa7#
(take back)
1 ... Qxg2#
(take back)
1 Bxb7#
(setup board)
1 ... gxf6
2 Nxg6 fxe5
3 Bexd5 exd4
4 Bxc4 Qxg6
5 Nxg5 Qxf5
6 Bxb3 Qxe4
7 Bxa2 Nxa2
8 Rxg1 Qxd3+
9 Kxd3 dxc3
10 Rxf1 Kxc7
11 Rxe1 Kxc6
12 Rxd1 Nxd1
13 Kxc2 Kxb5
