Post subject: Suggest invalid publications that don't meet site rules here
DrD2k9
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There has been concern regarding some publications (some older, some newer) that they no longer meet current site rules/standards. Discussion has taken place on such runs regarding whether or not they should be unpublished/identified/listed/etc. As there is no current easy way to identify these runs, I've started this topic to house suggestions of runs that members feel are invalid. If you feel there is a specific publication that doesn't meet current standards, list it here. This topic is only meant as a launching point for obsoleting runs that may be invalid. No judges/staff are (currently) curating this topic, so it will be strictly member opinion. The impetus on staff/judges to re-judge the current publication will only be after a new run (which attempts to obsolete the old one) is submitted. The burden of submitting a new run longer than the current publication would be on the author; namely to note in the submission comments why they feel their longer run is more up to par with site rules than the current publication. For those who care to help eliminate invalid runs, use this topic as a starting point to know which current publications to look into. Just because a game is suggested here, does not mean that it's invalid; just that someone feels it is. If you agree with a particular suggestion and want to help the site, the impetus is on you to work toward obsoleting the current publication. EDIT: If the staff finds this topic useless...please send it to Threaded Gruefood
Alyosha
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There are 2 examples I know of: [2599] A2600 Seaquest by morningpee in 01:39.80 [749] NES Paperboy by Randil in 11:30.78 These are emulator bugs. Last I checked the FCEUX one is still present. [2821] A2600 River Raid by Lord Tom in 1:22:47.90 is also basically one big emulation error but it at least looks passable. I’ll try to remember some more examples that I have happened upon in the course of working on BizHawk. EDIT: [3407] A7800 Scrapyard Dog by Noxxa in 11:04.14 contains obvious and fairly annoying graphical errors. I basically wrote A7800Hawk to fix this because it bothered me. [2585] A2600 Dodge 'Em by yep2yel & morningpee in 00:52.93 and [2226] A2600 Superman "pause glitch" by jlun2 in 00:11.42 need updated movie files and encodes but the runs themselves produce correct results. [814] SNES Star Fox "maximum score" by YtterbiJum in 19:47.37 the publication even says the game is not emulated correctly.
Patashu
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Do you want just runs that are invalid due to emulator glitches, or also runs that are invalid because if they were submitted today, they wouldn’t be eligible to vault due to changes in e.g. what counts as completing the game?
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Alyosha wrote:
There are 2 examples I know of: [2599] A2600 Seaquest by morningpee in 01:39.80 [749] NES Paperboy by Randil in 11:30.78 These are emulator bugs. Last I checked the FCEUX one is still present.
Can you please elaborate what you meant by emulator bugs? I went to the submission threads, and I don't seem to see any mention, at least for SeaQuest. The Stafy run technically works on console: https://youtu.be/iiTe6hF9twM?t=161 The problem is that the behavior in that video matches that on mGBA, rather than vba, so even disregarding the game bios, it would be slightly slower due to reaching moe a bit later. I feel kind of bad knowing this now after submitting the run years ago, given how this run isn't sync friendly either.
Patashu
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The seaquest emulator bug is elaborated upon here: http://tasvideos.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=15266 I think the Paperboy bug is that the starting layout of houses isn't reproducible on console due to differences in uninitialized RAM values?
My Chiptune music, made in Famitracker: http://soundcloud.com/patashu My twitch. I stream mostly shmups & rhythm games http://twitch.tv/patashu My youtube, again shmups and rhythm games and misc stuff: http://youtube.com/user/patashu
Alyosha
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Not uninitialized RAM. Paperboy runs a loop from power on that basically measures how long it takes to get an NMI (or some other ppu condition I forget exactly.) FCEUX adds a frame at the start of every movie which is basically a dead frame. I don’t know why exactly since this is not console behavior. This is also why you have to typically delete one frame from a FCEUX movie if you convert it to BizHawk and try to sync it up. So FCEUX gets a very incorrect count hence strange house positions. This Probably effects at least some other games that we just aren’t aware of yet. Edit: if someone out there has a NES and paperboy, it would be cool to just repeatedly power up the game and see how many different House variations you can actually get .