This topic is for the purpose of discussing #5775: hejops's GBC Keitai Denjuu Telefang: Speed Version in 1:59:14.49

1. Holy shit nice! I always wondered how a full game TAS would look like, but due to my lack of knowledge then (and stuck on sequel for years) I wasn't able to make one. 2. Can you please expand the notes a bit? Like memory addresses, tricks, etc? 3. I haven't checked the entire video yet, but I do recall that the phone glitch could be used to remove NPCs. I wonder how would a run like that look like now. Edit:

Generally, I can't believe this game doesn't have a legitimate equivalent to Pokemon's Fly. A good portion of this game is spent traveling previously visited routes.

I can totally relate; the sequel as well is like an hour worth of running in a "casual" play the skips all NPCs.

I didn't watched the encode yet, but I must note that it's quite an ambitious branch indeed. I'd like to have much more details about the run, about the route you followed and if you if exploited any glitches or not.

Updated. Are there are any videos of this phone glitch? That would save a massive amount of time.

Updated. Are there are any videos of this phone glitch? That would save a massive amount of time.

It's literally the glitch that the current "warped" TAS uses: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u2f32VvmcAs Post #269861 I legit have no idea how people would find a run of that, compared to doing this game as "intended" however; unlike the sequel random fights cannot be skipped. This can only be done if you recruited some Denjuu, and only in intervals of approximately 5 minutes each (since that's when the phone rings) so good luck on routing. Doing a run without it would be more "pure" since there will be no chance of warps, but if people find it entertaining enough to publish it could work as well.

Well, trying to get every trainer to disappear that way would probably be unfeasible, especially in dungeons with a lot of them. But perhaps the glitch could be used when there happens to be a trainer around while receiving a call. So I take it there's no way to intentionally trigger phone calls?

Don;t recall any way to make phone calls trigger outside waiting. The most blatant use of the phone call iirc was skipping talking to the Cat and Gummy in Kurinon Village along with the 2 NPCs blocking from Alice to Trippa Village. There's likely more, but I cannot recall what they were at the moment, sorry.

Alright, I'll keep that in mind if I ever decide to improve this run.

As the judge handling this submission, I'm currently going through the decision between accepting this movie for Moons or rejecting it for low entertainment. Since my personal opinion is that this movie is enough entertaining for Moons standards, I'd really like to have more feedback from the community, since there are currently few votes for this submission poll; moreover, I need to hear the reasons behind the Meh and No vote. In the meantime, I'll explain my own reasons. The importance of the game The game is original and deep Most people see this title as a Pokémon ripoff, which is silly, to say the least. The only similarity is that there are monsters fighting to each other, nothing else. These monsters fight on their own accord, and not because they got tamed by humans. This happens via an unique concept, that is calling them for help via a phone call. The fight mechanics are also different, as well as the plot. The game development and marketing A lot of efforts and money were invested for this series. There were two versions of the game released: Power Version and Speed Version. Limited-edition versions of the game included a physical peripheral called Power Antenna, to be plugged into the Game Link port. A manga was created and serialized from March 2000 to July 2001, and later released in 3 volumes. The success of the series was sufficent to lead to the release of a sequel, about 1 year and half later, for the Game Boy Advance. The game popularity While this game has been released officialy in Japan only, this is not a major problem since the Japan audience is significant for the TASing community; this could be mistakenly be perceived as a problem because of the difficulties that Japan people have in accessing TASVideos, due to language barrier. There is however an even more imporant factor: this game is also popular world-wide. This was mostly caused by the spread of pirate translations sold everywhere as Pokémon Diamond and Pokémon Jade. Translated languages include English, Chinese, German, Spanish. There are as well some pirated ports for NES and some graphics are even found on unrelated bootleg games. To the present day, there is a respectable community and an independent wiki featuring exhaustive informations on this and related games by the same company. They are currently working on the ambitious goal of developing a patch for a correct and complete translation of the game in English, from about 9 years now: http://wiki.telefang.net/WF:T1TP The entertaining value of the movie The movie features optimized RPG gameplay While some people may find TASes made with RPG games to be boring, I want to point out that this is purely subjective: for example, there is a huge amount of people that find Pokémon glitchless TASes and speedruns to be highly entertaining; in fact, we already accepted for the Moons tier many RPG TASes that forgoe making use of major skip glitches. The movie in this submission features a nice optimization of fights, setting it far ahead over any possible real-time attempt, which is easily noticeable. As a side note, the run also features the use of some minor exploits for skipping some secondary battles and some overworld movement optimizations. The movie features appealing graphics This game features detailed graphics, that combines nicely with the free movement and dynamic screen transitions, which are something that has been witnessed in Game Boy only for Zelda games. This movie features awesome musics This run goal also allowed to hear much more of the incredibly good musics that have been composed for this game. I personally consider these as some of the best found on GB/C titles. The nostalgia factor Lastly, I have to point out that the entertaining value for TASes often depends from the familiarity that the watcher has toward both the specific game and the console in general. For me, as someone who stumbled to some pirated translations when was little, would be delighted to have at least one extra branch for publication. Conclusion. I'm firmly convinced that TASVideos needs this run and that rejecting it would set a bad precedent, for both this specific game series and the RPG TASing in general.

The nostalgia factor Lastly, I have to point out that the entertaining value for TASes often depends from the familiarity that the watcher has toward both the specific game and the console in general.... Conclusion. I'm firmly convinced that TASVideos needs this run and that rejecting it would set a bad precedent, for both this specific game series and the RPG TASing in general.

Though I'm not familiar with this particular title, I fully agree that RPGs deserve a place on the site as with (most) any other game genre. Hopefully no one will use this comment to suggest that I fully support all genres...I don't want to prompt another debate on educational games (at least not yet). Even if you end up needing to reject this particular run for some reason, you could state in your rejection notes that no part of the decision was due to the game being a RPG. That should be sufficient to prevent a precedent against RPGs in general. Also, is "warpless" as the branch a reason this couldn't be a vaultable title? If so, that again doesn't set precedent against RPGs in general.

Also, is "warpless" as the branch a reason this couldn't be a vaultable title? If so, that again doesn't set precedent against RPGs in general.

To be accurate, this submission is aiming to beat the game while forgoing the use of warp glitches. For this reason, it cannot be accepted for Vault. In my opinion, having the label "glitchless" would be more explainatory. There are some minor exploits used for skipping some secondary battles, but I consider these more like a legit workaround than a glitch abuse.

Also, is "warpless" as the branch a reason this couldn't be a vaultable title? If so, that again doesn't set precedent against RPGs in general.

To be accurate, this submission is aiming to beat the game while forgoing the use of warp glitches. For this reason, it cannot be accepted for Vault. In my opinion, having the label "glitchless" would be more explainatory. There are some minor exploits used for skipping some secondary battles, but I consider these more like a legit workaround than a glitch abuse.

I voted meh, due to it's length, unskippable fights, and the fact I have legit no idea what is actually going on storywise due to being all japanese. If it's any comfort, I don't actually mind too much, given I do actually play (and TASed) some japanese games, but it certainly makes the length a bit less bearable. I have no idea would a somewhat shorter run that goes through all bosses, but uses that phone glitch would make it "better", but due to the mandatory random encounters I don't exactly envy the person attempting to try that out to see. I didn't vote no however, due to mostly the reasons you mentioned above.

In my opinion, having the label "glitchless" would be more explainatory.

Agreed. "Warpless" should be reserved for games where warping is allowed as part of the normal game. "No Warp Glitches" should be used for games where known glitches are not used to accomplish warps.

I voted no, although in hindsight meh might have been more appropriate. The music is generally appealing, and the pace is not even too bad, but two hours of an RPG of its nature is still an enormous slog if you're not reasonably familiar with the games or franchise. So far I haven't really seen broad appeal value or interest outside of people who are already familiar with the game/franchise, although I could be wrong.

I voted no, although in hindsight meh might have been more appropriate. The music is generally appealing, and the pace is not even too bad, but two hours of an RPG of its nature is still an enormous slog if you're not reasonably familiar with the games or franchise. So far I haven't really seen broad appeal value or interest outside of people who are already familiar with the game/franchise, although I could be wrong.

Ok, then I'll consider that as a "weak" No vote. By the way, I have to agree that the lenght of the movie is a legit point. While it's pretty common for RPG games to have an extra Moons branch that forgoes using a major-skip glitch, I must also note that having a third extra branch for an even longer movie is extremely rare; as far I know, only Pokémon TASes could warrant one. Since this game series is less popular than Pokémon series, I figured from the start that only one extra branch should be allowed; however I still wasn't sure about which goal should have been set: forgoing to use the major skip glitch or forgoing to use *any* glitch. Since forgoing to use any glitches means longer movies, I think it makes sense to avoid that. Maybe in future this could change, depending on how the TASVideos community will feel about this game series. Also, this will avoid to take the controversial decision of declaring the battle skipping tricks in this run as non-glitch exploits. For these reasons, I would like to label this submission as a "no memory corruption" run. We already have a Pokémon Gold run with the same branch name, and even though that movie is pretty old, I think such name makes sense, since there are also relative movie tags that can indicate it clearly ("Corrupts memory" vs "Foregoes memory corruption")

Honestly, this movie should be branchless, and the currently published movie should have the "warp glitch" branch. Same thing with Pokemon gold and it's 2 movies.

Honestly, this movie should be branchless, and the currently published movie should have the "warp glitch" branch. Same thing with Pokemon gold and it's 2 movies.

I disagree. I also initially suggested to leave the label blank for the Pokémon Diamond run currently in the Workbench, but now I see that it would make things confusing. To me, it looks more intuitive to leave the label blank for the fastest completion, while on the other hand using a descriptive branch name for runs that forgoe using a particular glitch or whatever other limitation (eg: "no B presses", "no friction", etc.). Exceptions could be made for runs that make abuse of only one specific exploit, like "SRAM glitch" or "game end glitch", and this can't be done for the current publication of Keitai Denjuu Telefang, because of the nature of the glitch, which has multiple different effects beside triggering unintended warps. Also note that the current publication also makes extensive use of passwords. So it would end like "memory corruption, password" which sounds very inappropriate to me. By the way, I now see the branch name for this run should also make it clear that it's forgoing the use of password as well. So I change it "no memory corruption, no passwords" since I think it should be clear that future runs aiming to obsolete this one should also forgoe the use passwords, which would allow to unlock strong monsters early. Edit: In the end I decided to come with "no memory corruption, no phone numbers", since it's more correct for this particular game. The term "password" is usually used for codes that unlock levels or game modes.

I hope it's not too late to talk about branches. Sorry, I haven't fully read everything yet, I'll evaluate everything fully tomorrow. So a quick note first. Using blank branches just because it's fastest is not what we do here. Doing so causes so much damage to the branch structure that it was decided to use a better approach. http://tasvideos.org/JudgeGuidelines.html#Branches http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15247 Tomorrow I'll read everything and post my actual thoughts about this movie.

I have been contacted by ThunderAxe31 for my own thoughts on the branch naming. Over on IRC, this is the conclusion I feel we left with: Published movie: Change branch from blank to "map glitch" (or, more generically, "warp glitch", although I prefer the more specific branch) This submission: Set branch as "no phone numbers" For the "glitched/unglitched" branching, it's my impression we generally name the glitched one if it basically defies the structure of the game, and name the unglitched one if the glitches involved leave the game somewhat intact. Of our Final Fantasy TASes, the fastest one is marked with "stairs glitch", while the usual any% run that forgoes this glitch has no branch name. Among the Zelda II TASes, we've named the faster glitched branch and the slower unwarped branch, and the middle "any%" is the one left blank. So it's clear to me that the run with the map glitch should be called out as such. As the phone numbers, while they do break the game challenge, do not break the game's basic structure, are much, much smaller than the effects of the map glitch, so leaving the name as "map glitch" (or something indicative of a major glitch) would be suggested. As for phone numbers, that's actually a bit fuzzier. In a sense, the game comes with its own password system to give yourself some sort of advantage. Using it does give a large enough advantage to essentially defeat all challenge in the game, but unlike a password system intended to restore progress within a game, that by itself doesn't drop the player at the endgame. It's more akin to trading in some powerful trained up Pokémon to a fresh game and crushing its challenges (and exactly that does happen a bit into this TAS, although part of the time was training up such a fighter). When in doubt, refer to whatever speedrunning community the game has. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of much of one. When still in doubt, more description is better than less, and saying "no phone numbers" may help to inform the viewer there is a mechanic in the game that can give the runner a sizeable advantage that we avoid. If there are plenty of speedrunners who would think avoiding phone numbers should be standard, then a blank branch is appropriate, but with an absence of such, I would err toward including the "no phone numbers" conduct as a branch name. In any case, I am firmly of the opinion that we should name the published glitched TAS, perhaps "map glitch" or something like that, and originally was leaning slightly to leaving this submission blank. I have been swayed to thinking "no phone numbers" is the appropriate branch name for this one, although I still don't feel firmly about it. This post is my take on the results of our IRC discussion.

Using blank branches just because it's fastest is not what we do here. Doing so causes so much damage to the branch structure that it was decided to use a better approach.

Published movie: Change branch from blank to "map glitch" (or, more generically, "warp glitch", although I prefer the more specific branch) This submission: Set branch as "no phone numbers"

I agree that the current publication could be labeled as "map glitch", since it describes well enough the glitch abused in that run. For this submission, I'm still for having "no memory corruption, no phone numbers" because I think it should be clear that future runs aiming to obsolete this one should forgoe using *any* kind of memory corruption, in case a new memory-corrupting glitch is discovered. However, I'm open to discussing this further.

When in doubt, refer to whatever speedrunning community the game has.

There is currently only one known speedrun for this game; the branch is named "any%" and it forgoes using both the map glitch and phone numbers: https://www.speedrun.com/telefang

"no phone numbers"

I have no idea how OP this is compared to the sequel, but iirc (need to recheck notes at home), for the sequel at least, surprisingly not using the phone "only" wastes like 20,000 frames (or around 5 mins) by the mid point of the game. Apparently, it was because the special attacks were super OP, so even if you were like 20 levels lower, you could still KO opponents very fast. Now I'm curious how faster it would be for the original to use phone, and without warping. Edit: It was actually 17379 frames, or 04:49.65. Close I guess.

I wonder how many people have actually read things I linked. The word clear was used 5 times in this thread to indicate how clear chatty branch labels are. The movie I linked above (1944M) once had branch label "no null sprite spit, no stun glitch". Because people who gave it that branch believed that it was clear. The fact that they were vested editors, not judges, doesn't help. When admins saw that branch, it was clear to them, that things can't go that direction. Interestingly, despite of hearing from a lot of users how unclear such branches would get in the end, people changing them believed that they were clear too strongly, so no one was heard until it was too late. A huge conversation was spawned, and the result was that neither "X", nor "no X" is what the majority prefers. There was no majority. The community exactly halved. When 2 such camps have contradicting opinions, forcing any of these opinions disrespects half of the crowd. So we abstracted from the dilemma and switched to the approach that doesn't enforce any side. We started simply relying on statistics, labeling explicitly things that are uncommon and options that are equal. Why blind statistics? Because clear is subjective, and it can't be used as a reason. Each camp I mentioned considered their preference to be clear. Memory corruption is an uncommon category, because it's hard to pull off. Branches utilizing that technique usually have the major skip glitch category as a result. It's also uncommon. Additionally, some people really hate game breaking glitches, so considering such branches any% isn't perfect. So we retired the concept of any% from branch structure altogether. It only matters for deciding Vault eligibility. Blank branch doesn't correlate with any% anymore. Why? Because any% is subjective as well. So how do we apply the branching rules here? As explained above, we don't have to mention forgoing the major skip glitch, because using it is uncommon, so forgoing it is implied. And it has only happened once that we had a game with two major skip glitch branches at the same time: [1978] SNES Super Metroid "X-Ray glitch" by Cpadolf in 21:25.12 [2558] SNES Super Metroid "GT code, game end glitch" by amaurea, Cpadolf & total in 14:52.88 With that exception, even within one game, there is only one major skip glitch branch, and all others avoid that tech. So yeah, it's use is uncommon, can be considered an exception, and doesn't need to be mentioned in the branch label explicitly. About "phone numbers". Again, we need to check which option is common, or if they are equal, mention both. So far there's not much to choose from, this is only the second branch. This branch avoids phone numbers, the other one uses them. Since it's not a password system, but more of a helper, it can be arguably considered a legit technique. But the RTA doesn't. So I'm not sure what to do. What if we simply mention this decision in the movie description? After all, not every little aspect necessarily goes to the branch label, and whenever there's possible clutter, we can use movie description to explain the exact set of rules. It is what happens here for instance: [2339] SNES Chrono Trigger "completionist" by Saturn in 5:44:58.18 How much time would be gained in this submission if phone numbers were used?

Sorry if it looked like I didn't followed your documentations, it's just that I find this matter very confusing. However, I see your point about omitting branch names for what's the norm, so I'm now convinced in dropping the "no memory corruption" part. Also, by following the logic you presented, we should give a branch name to the current publication as I already suggested, since the glitch used there it's almost impossible to reproduce in real time attempts, since it requires frame precision. About the phone numbers, I would require some time to do a rough estimate, but I'd say it could save from 3 to 10 minutes over the 2 hours of the submitted run. While this is overally a minor amount of time, I have to note that it would take away the most important entertaining factor from this run. You see, unlocking the strongest monster from the start would allow to take down every single oppenent in one hit, before they could even do anything to you. This would take away any necessity for RNG manipulation and fight optimizations at all, which would basically take away the RPG TASing. I don't think such a run could make it in Moons.

It sounds like it's the case of "speed/entertainment tradeoffs" so far. Which is just a movie class. As for the branch for the original run, if the setup or the results are too complicated, we invent a new term, and "map glitch" was used for this game since the beginning it seems, so yeah.

Can anyone suggest a screenshot?