The data used from the TOC are the following: MR1: -Total CD time (minutes, seconds) -1st track seconds -Total tracks MR2: -Total CD time (minutes, seconds) -1st track seconds -Last track seconds In that context, sure, it is not hard to create a "perfect" disc. However, the amount of things you can control even with perfect control would lead to only a marginally better monster. That, and it's perfectly reasonable that a commercial disc might exist that resolves to the same set. There are several hard-coded monsters in either game, where specific exact TOC values resolve to a special monster, usually of a unique breed or stats. For example, using the MR1 disc in MR2's shrine creates a Sueki Suezo. This special monster is unique and has great stats across the board, but only lives one week. In MR2, a number of breeds are locked out from a new game. Even if you make a disc that would resolve to them, you would not be allowed to recruit them until meeting certain in-game milestones. This limits choice for some of the more powerful breeds. As far as I remember, monster generation from discs is the main way you're supposed to obtain new monsters. I think MR2 also allows you to buy monsters, but they are only of basic type and stats. NK mentioned combining monsters - which has the potential to lead to some extremely powerful monsters, but afaik is not fully understood. You still need monsters to combine to begin with, so still requires generation from disc to be functional. Without special in-game items though, the combining typically resolves to something like mixing the major breeds and averaging stats between them.

Omnigamer, NK mentioned a monster used in this movie would require a very long setup if the other disk is not used. This sounds like a case where a SRAM anchored movie might come into play. Does this sound correct? It's important to know when observing all the options of dealing with such movies and comparing their pros and cons.

I think what NK was referring to was getting back to this exact monster type without generating from a disc. That would involve waiting for Pixie to be in the seasonal market rotation, and also doing an abundance of quests (including training another, separate monster) until you could obtain an item that would give the dragon subtype on combine. The game is intended to be played with monsters generated from discs; you are severely limited in your options otherwise. For an SRAM-anchored movie, it would be set up as a NG+ scenario. With an appropriate SRAM that enables all monster types and has the ranch built up enough, any possible monster that can be generated could be used. This increases the number of monsters you can work with by about 40%, but also changes strategy a fair bit. But to the core of your question, no, having an SRAM-anchored movie would not be enough to avoid using a separate, specific disc. Unless, of course, you allowed for modifying the SRAM to also incorporate a monster, which would allow for any arbitrary type or stats. If you wanted to allow SRAM modification as a means of bypassing using another disc altogether, I think you'd still have to share the appropriate TOC values that would resolve the monster in question. This isn't possible yet, but with a bit more reverse engineering and research probably could be. FWIW, the Pixie/Dragon "Daina" used by NK in this movie is a good monster, but possibly not the best. It is also not a "special" monster; many different discs have been found that can resolve it. Other stat seeds may lead to a better overall monster, depending on the strategy. It may not even be an optimal monster type, but it's a very wide pool to search through and strategize for.

You still need monsters to combine to begin with, so still requires generation from disc to be functional. Without special in-game items though, the combining typically resolves to something like mixing the major breeds and averaging stats between them.

In MR2, if you want have some item for create or combine to new monster, you need complete some event to make that monster avaiable. Example my monster Daina, subtype Pixie/Dragon. With normal way, I need create Dragon from item, for can do that, I need complete this then I need combine Pixie with Dragon for have chance get Daina. That's why I said need very long time setup to get Daina I can get Daina from CD because Pixie have avaiable at begining, but I can't get Dragon at this time because it's not avaible at begining, other not basic monsters are same

But to the core of your question, no, having an SRAM-anchored movie would not be enough to avoid using a separate, specific disc. Unless, of course, you allowed for modifying the SRAM to also incorporate a monster, which would allow for any arbitrary type or stats. If you wanted to allow SRAM modification as a means of bypassing using another disc altogether, I think you'd still have to share the appropriate TOC values that would resolve the monster in question. This isn't possible yet, but with a bit more reverse engineering and research probably could be.

This point is incredibly strong. We might argue with the game mechanic bringing up a lot of reasons, but if it's literally the only way to access some content, we should prefer allowing this mechanic (under certain conditions, TBD) to hacking the data used in the run that the rules disallow to hack (ROM, RAM, SRAM).

FWIW, the Pixie/Dragon "Daina" used by NK in this movie is a good monster, but possibly not the best. It is also not a "special" monster; many different discs have been found that can resolve it. Other stat seeds may lead to a better overall monster, depending on the strategy. It may not even be an optimal monster type, but it's a very wide pool to search through and strategize for.

Does this mean using a monster generator CD would allow to use a more optimal monster?

It has the potential to generate a better monster, yes. Better, in this case, just means perfect selection of stat seeds. There are 2 stat seeds used to create monsters; I have the stat table for at least one of those seeds, it is unknown if the second seed uses the same table. For example, using the values from this table, and assuming that the game uses the same table for both seeds, you could possibly generate a monster with dual Seed 34. This would give a magic-based powerhouse, if that was the particular strategy you were trying to set up. Or perhaps a balance across the board would be better. It's all a planning game at that point, but you are still limited by what's already in the stat table.

at my knowledge in this game, few stats aren't too important. Because you're never can create a new monster have max stats instantly. In real, players have possible gain max all stats thourght items used and training ways. The important must at strategies, optimal training, combine strategies, etc

The situation in general We TAS software, which is games, in isolation. We heavily depend on absence of external modifications to that software, and we guarantee they're not applied. This is important for the validity reasons. Which, in turn, is important when we want to keep TASing impressive, entertaining, legitimate in terms of competition, available to everyone due to equality of initial conditions. We allow any input the software in question allows us to send to it. We don't care whether this input is actually processed, accounted for, causes bugs, or just subtly changes the game state. This is why we allow contradictory directions on the D-pad, Reset while saving, using input bits that aren't present on the official controller, and so on and so forth. We do not allow events of the physical or hardware world to be used in TASes. Because these can't be emulated. You can not emulate effects of kicking the console, pulling the cartridge out half-way, room temperature affecting startup state, random bit decay, etc. Emulation means we reproduce the logic of the software. Simulation means we try to reproduce a physical event we can't fully understand nor recreate. Game image is written on a read-only medium, and is stored by the physical representation of bits on it, but we don't care about their physical nature: the bits only contain the information in a machine readable form, but the very logic (program) behind this information can be encoded in any way we want. So we copy this program on our hard drives and use it for TASing. We basically decode the information contained on the game medium, and disregard the physical side of things. The rules The rule about game integrity that I added recently reflects all of the above. We only TAS game programs, and we want only game programs to be TASed. Swapping disks in unintended order breaks the integrity if the original program. The program was designed as a whole, and then broken into disks so it could fit. It's not like it's represented as separate independent chapters that we play in the order we're asked to play them. The game explicitly needs the next disk, because it's written to be consecutive - integral. Adding disks that aren't required consecutive parts of the original game program has the same problematic aspects, so it's also not allowed. In this case one is not TASing the original game at all anymore, and irrelevant data is being fed to the console, so this may count as modifying the game image, which is fundamentally banned. Additionally, the above scenarios also make a breach in the software world we're dealing with, and introduce physical and hardware events. Those events can't be emulated, as I said, aren't reproducible or deterministic, so we can't afford introducing them into your system. After all, in our emulators we even patch away actual non-determinism of the console, because we prefer verifiability of movies and sync stability of savestates. Not that inserting irrelevant images can't be emulated, but it's a step out of our game-software-in-isolation environment. Since we depend on this isolation's integrity, any breach in it causes all sorts of problems, like legitimacy issues in the eyes of the community, undefined initial conditions for the competition, undefined borderline between emulation and simulation, undefined reliability and stability of emulation, and likely some others. Exceptions? This is a tough problem. Given all of the above, this particular game is known to have content that can only be unlocked if irrelevant images that don't belong to the game are used. Trying to work around this would require starting from an emulator savestate, as even save file can't carry or generate all the needed info we need here. So first of all, I think we need an exception in this case. Since it is so unique and ridiculous, I'm not even sure if we need to allow exceptions like this right in the rules. Maybe some smart way of addressing this can be added, but I can't generalize it yet. I believe that using arbitrary images even for cases like this one should not be allowed under any circumstances. Arbitrary means literally arbitrary: it can be an unreleased Demo disk of some Gore Grind band from Antarctica, and the movie may completely refuse to sync on anything else. Allowing arbitrary images means we invite such scenarios for all such cases. We can't limit this to "obtainable" disks either, because this definition is even weaker, and introduces actual legal problems. I believe that for this game, we must limit ourselves to the most effective hand-crafted image that does what the game wants from it, and nothing more. This removes the problems mentioned in the previous paragraph and allows to stick to something strongly and clearly defined, while also guaranteeing against any legality problems. Vaultable? Should we allow movies using images, that don't belong to the original game, for Vault? The Vault is designed to only allow things that can be easily, clearly, and unambiguously defined. While some of the Vault rues are still quite complicated in their wording (like those for sports games, or for full completion), the spirit behind them is still simple: we want clear cuts and meaningful speed competition records. In that sense, due to all the complexity of this case-by-case exception, I do not think that we should allow use of unintended images for Vault. And the definition of intended image is the same: either the game explicitly asks for some particular image, or the publisher encourages using it, like it happens with Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3 (or modern DLCs maybe). Added later: Another way to look at this, it's similar to save anchored movies. Starting a game as it is and playing it from scratch is a vaultable concept. Using an external resource to boost your stats is not. This submission If we agree on all of the above, this submission would need to be 1) replayed using the hand-crafted, most optimal secondary disk image, 2) optimal enough to be accepted, 3) entertaining enough to be accepted to Moons. If either of these isn't met, it'd have to be rejected. Opinions?

I've tried replacing the secondary image used for this submission with a blank image... While I succeeded in unlocking the monster, I immediately encountered an irreversible desync. If anyone wants to try to resync the movie, you can get the hand-crafted image from here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5zdf5jd98568d7q/MR2%20Pixie.zip?dl=1 From what I could see, the size of the track files determine the monster species, while the contents of the track files affect sync. I've tried padding the track files with 0x00 and then 0xFF bytes, but the result was the same. It's some specific file structure in the first track that makes the movie different... But no idea what.

---

this particular game is known to have content that can only be unlocked if irrelevant images that don't belong to the game are used.

What do you mean with "irrelevant"? Since it's the game itself that supports and encourges it, any CD in existence is potentially able to be used for the purpose of the intended game mechanic. I understand that this looks ridiculous, but in the end Monster Rancher 1/2 is just making use of the hardware possibilities in a much more deep way than most PSX games do, and it's reproducible. It's not like it's asking the player to kick the console while playing or put the Memory Card in an oven.

I believe that using arbitrary images even for cases like this one should not be allowed under any circumstances. Arbitrary means literally arbitrary: it can be an unreleased Demo disk of some Gore Grind band from Antarctica, and the movie may completely refuse to sync on anything else. Allowing arbitrary images means we invite such scenarios for all such cases. We can't limit this to "obtainable" disks either, because this definition is even weaker, and introduces actual legal problems.

I agree that we should forbid any copyrighted material, except for official PSX game images, because they are necessary for making movies in first place. We already allow that, so it would be contradictory to forbid usage of the specific image for being from an official PSX CD. On the other hand, using non-copyrighted, hand-crafted, blank images would mean that accessing to them is easy and legal. This could be encouraged, but not required, since we can't forbid usage of PSX images without making movie creation impossible. So this specific point shouldn't be a problem for this submission, since it's making use of good dumps of official PSX games only.

In that sense, due to all the complexity of this case-by-case exception, I do not think that we should allow use of unintended images for Vault. And the definition of intended image is the same: either the game explicitly asks for some particular image, or the publisher encourages using it, like it happens with Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3 (or modern DLCs maybe).

I totally agree with this point. The usage of arbitrary images introduces the same problem of secret passwords, codes, and input sequences: these rely on a knowledge external to the game and its official manual, and thus giving an unfair advantage to the player. So a movie that makes use of an arbitrary image should be allowed only if it introduces gameplay that results enough different from the Vaultable branches, as well as meeting the entertainment requirements of Moons tier.

---

So, given my thoughts expressed above, I think that we could allow usage of both hand-crafted images and arbitrary PSX images, just for Monster Rancher 1/2, and just when the game explicitly prompts the player to.

---

I also have an alternative idea. Since some games are known to require emulation of additional hardware functionalities, like for example Kirby Tilt 'n' Tumble, it would make sense to implement in BizHawk the ability to generate a blank image on the fly, just for Monster Rancher 1/2, since these are the only games that make official use of this hardware possibility.

What if no game gives optimal outcome here? Having to brute-force this problem by trying them all doesn't feel like anything we want to approve. When we design the perfect image by hand, it removes all the possible problems in my eyes.

What if no game gives optimal outcome here? Having to brute-force this problem by trying them all doesn't feel like anything we want to approve.

There is no such thing as optimal outcome anyway. We had a lot of movies in the past that looked unbeatable, and despite that they got bested at some point, again and again. The only thing we can do is assess if a movie looks reasonably optimized for our standards. This is especially true for games like Monster Rancher 1/2: obtaining a strong monster is not the only factor that determines the optimality of a run, since the game requires the TASer to do an immense amount of planning of all the possible choices and strategies, which also differ in relation to the chosen monster.

When we design the perfect image by hand, it removes all the possible problems in my eyes.

I suppose you're referring to the optimality and legality problems. For what concernes optimality: designing an image by hand requires reverse-engeneering of the game code, and I don't think that we should require the TASers to work to such extent for making an acceptable TAS. There are some games that provide an insane amount of possible routes, making it pratically impossible to know beforehand how much a movie is close (or far) to perfection. Even if we struggled to design a seemingly perfect image by hand, it could still be beaten by using a game image. For what concernes legality, I already said that there shouldn't be problems if the image used is a PSX game as well. What's wrong with my point?

There is no such thing as optimal outcome anyway. We had a lot of movies in the past that looked unbeatable, and despite that they got bested at some point, again and again. The only thing we can do is assess if a movie looks reasonably optimized for our standards.

No, you can very well craft an image that suits best your needs for a given movie. You want to maximize some stats and minimize some side effect - you use the image that actually maximizes and minimizes those. I don't mean that it has to lead to an unbeatable movie, it should just provide you with the best seed you want. It's just easier to design such an image yourself that to look through hundreds of games hoping some will appear as useful.

I suppose you're referring to the optimality and legality problems. For what concernes optimality: designing an image by hand requires reverse-engeneering of the game code, and I don't think that we should require the TASers to work to such extent for making an acceptable TAS. There are some games that provide an insane amount of possible routes, making it pratically impossible to know beforehand how much a movie is close (or far) to perfection. Even if we struggled to design a seemingly perfect image by hand, it could still be beaten by using a game image. For what concerns legality, I already said that there shouldn't be problems if the image used is a PSX game as well. What's wrong with my point?

Do you really think blindly trying every game is more effective than tweaking a single image? And if no game results in something we want, what do we do? Give up and use a game that gives us stats known to be suboptimal? I don't see a point in this approach. As for reverse engineering, all we need to know is what is used and how, and what we can afford as a result. All the planning is done independently regardless. And then, to accommodate us with our route, we design an image that works best for us. Then, I think limiting ourselves to PSX games (or games in general) here is arbitrary. This game explicitly asks to try all sorts of irrelevant images, so if we stick to something particular, we disregard the game instruction. And if we don't stick to games, then we start depending on things that don't even belong to TASing or gaming, so it's even worse. So to escape from this loophole, I suggest using something we have full control on, just because it's the most effective approach.

So I pretty much agree with most of feos's suggestion. However if we were to treat this like a save anchored movie, in that case it makes sense to hold external images up to similar standards as such. We require saves-anchored movies to be accompanied by movie files to generate said saves. In order to ensure validity and prevent any arbitrary or potentially malicious images, I would like any external images required to run the TAS to be independently verified. I would like the process to generate such an image to be required to be properly documented and able to be independently replicated. Validity is a key concern to TASVideos and I want that to be of prime concern even with handcrafted images. Omnigamer has luckily provided us with a fair amount of documentation regarding the series so this should be doable. If we follow such a principle I believe this would allow us to expand the ruling behind this exception to other potential unique scenarios that require things besides the intended game image for running the game. If a TAS requires something beyond the intended game image and the game intends to be played with such, then it should be reasonable to require documentation as to how such would be incorporated.

So far I don't know any other game (or game series) that'd explicitly ask for irrelevant images. Within this exceptional case, validity and reproducibility should indeed be tested. But for all the other games, I believe the rule about image integrity will stand.

So far I don't know any other game (or game series) that'd explicitly ask for irrelevant images. Within this exceptional case, validity and reproducibility should indeed be tested. But for all the other games, I believe the rule about image integrity will stand.

My point was more in regards to any nonstandard thing a game may ask for that is somehow emulated properly. Might not be explicitly disc images. EDIT: For example augmented reality type games like Treasure World which is heavily dependent on the DS picking up WiFi signals or Face Raiders which requires the usage of the 3DS camera to take pictures of faces to add to enemies. These might not be TASable at the moment but the potential is still there.

Right, for anything like this we'll need to come up with new rules, that'd consider all the limitations and possibilities we could bring up. It's just completely separate from the additional images problem, so it shouldn't affect our decisions for this game and similar ones.

I believe that using arbitrary images even for cases like this one should not be allowed under any circumstances. [...] No, you can very well craft an image that suits best your needs for a given movie.

While I also think there should be some kind of restriction for publication reasons (nudes, virus, justin beiber albums), I hope there is a plan to lessen the strictness of this... My opinion focusing in the sense of playing the game: 1. This particular game heavily encourages the player to try CD's he/she/xir owns for different effects in-game. So I don't see any problem in arbitrary CDs. 2. Texts from the official manual also states CDs you own, no restrictions.

page 8 - I want to generate a Monter from the CDs I own. Go to the Shrine and ask the priest about it. (See p9)
page 9 - With your own CDs, you can generate all kinds of Monsters. Install the CD into the PlayStation and do what the priest instructs you to do.
page 25 - In addition to generating Monsters from your CDs, [..]
page 25 - [...] in which you raise the Monsters generated from CD's [...]
page 25 - Try as many CD's as possible at the shrine.

The manual only have the requirement of "Installing CD" which actually just putting any CD. The gamefaq's manual mentions various examples of soundtracks and PC games to get a specific monster (however there can be minimal differences between the same product so it won't yield 100% the same monster). edit: So my opinion is that there shouldn't be any limit considering what CDs could be used. And yes, there are other video games where you will need external accessories aswell as data in some kind of format holding information made for being interpreted, for example http://barcodebattler.wikia.com/wiki/Barcode_Battler for NES waiting barcodes or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_e-Reader for GBA waiting also some barcodes. Probability of someone making a TAS for these is another question.

Images that ultimately belong to the real world, and not to the game program, can't be used for movies, simply because you can not record real world into a movie just like that. The real world uses to decay, and images may disappear over time, becoming unavailable. But I already elaborated on the practical benefits of a hand-crafter image here: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=473807#473807 As Memory pointed out, using such an image in the movie, with detailed instructions how to recreate it, makes it future proof in addition to all else.

As far as self-created images: Assuming someone knew exactly where the game looked for data on the target image/disc, couldn't someone create a image to yield the desired data then burn it to a practical CD and use it on a real system? If that's the case, then any CD data or image that could be burned to real media should be considered valid as it would be theoretically usable on a real machine as well. I agree and fully support MESHUGGAH's reasons for restricting the data of that image for publication on the site. From a data standpoint though, the examples suggested -- (nudes, virus, justin beiber albums) -- would still probably be valid data sources.

As far as self-created images: Assuming someone knew exactly where the game looked for data on the target image/disc, couldn't someone create a image to yield the desired data then burn it to a practical CD and use it on a real system?

Of course!

If that's the case, then any CD data or image that could be burned to real media should be considered valid as it would be theoretically usable on a real machine as well. I agree and fully support MESHUGGAH's reasons for restricting the data of that image for publication on the site. From a data standpoint though, the examples suggested -- (nudes, virus, justin beiber albums) -- would still probably be valid data sources.

I don't understand what you're saying. What's your take on my longpost?

I agree with a lot of it, including potentially avoiding copy-written discs/images as the secondary image. The only questions I have are regarding vaultibility.

Vaultable? Should we allow movies using images, that don't belong to the original game, for Vault? The Vault is designed to only allow things that can be easily, clearly, and unambiguously defined. While some of the Vault rues are still quite complicated in their wording (like those for sports games, or for full completion), the spirit behind them is still simple: we want clear cuts and meaningful speed competition records. In that sense, due to all the complexity of this case-by-case exception, I do not think that we should allow use of unintended images for Vault. And the definition of intended image is the same: either the game explicitly asks for some particular image, or the publisher encourages using it, like it happens with Sonic & Knuckles and Sonic 3 (or modern DLCs maybe).

If we are requiring a custom optimal image for the secondary disk to be shared/reproduced with the publication, then this aspect for any future submissions should be considered clearly and unambiguously defined as long as the secondary image accompanies the submission (either directly attached, or complete directions on how to reproduce). As far as using publisher intended images, the publishers explicitly say to use any CD's you have. Therefore no discs/images should be considered unintended. Also considering the following:

Starting a game as it is and playing it from scratch is a vaultable concept. Using an external resource to boost your stats is not.

This game however isn't the same situation as using an unintended external source (such as a game-genie) to boost the stats. Game modifiers (game genie, etc) introduce different than standard gameplay. The key with this game is that the use of an external resource (different discs) to boost stats is expected and encouraged. Therefore using additional discs/images is considered by the publishers as part of standard gameplay. For these reasons, I feel that submissions should still be vault eligible. EDIT: Regarding my earlier comment. I was just suggesting that those types of data would be valid in a real-life situation....not suggesting we accept them here.

Using SRAM in games like Pokemon or Chrono Trigger is also expected and encouraged. Doesn't mean it should become vaultable. And it's unvaultable not because of things you're describing ("unintended external source (such as a game-genie)"), but because it's not running the game from scratch: it's not any%.

Ok, I skimmed through things again. I didn't realize before that all of the above discussion regarding secondary images was only considering a starting point from a saved game (NG+) standpoint. I was thinking as if the run were started from scratch and utilized the secondary image to obtain the desired outcome. As far as a game starting in an NG+ state, I agree it shouldn't be able to make vault. If a game is started from scratch, then the secondary image is used in the course of the from-scratch game to obtain whatever outcome, I think that should be acceptable to vault. Sorry if I made this discussion more confusing.

Saved game is not related either. Saved game won't help us get rid of the additional image requirement if we want new monsters. The question is, why do you think we should judge 2 similar scenarios differently: 1) using SRAM to unlock new content not available from scratch, and 2) using additional image to unlock new content not available from scratch? How does the latter magically make it any%? Especially given how strict some people are about any% in general, the purpose of Vault is to never have to explain anyone that "well, this particular not-quite-any% is still considered any% by some people, therefore we consider it absolutely objectively clear cut, and therefore vaultable". Do excuses like this really sound sensible to anyone?