I've made a page listing of techniques not allowed/possible currently for submitting TAS. The goal is mostly "allow submitting movies that were done in real life". The page is subject to change as I'm gathering more examples and dimensions.
http://tasvideos.org/MESHUGGAH/ForbiddenTechniques.html
I would be happy to read feedbacks/discussion about these things. Probably this shouldn't be that thread (as the page consists of many different ones) but somewhere had to "highlight" this page.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
How about runs that involve physical interaction with the setup (kicking the console, plugging/unplugging something, opening the disk tray/swapping disks for any reason except a game-required disk swap, crooked cartridge)? Not sure how many of these are used in runs, but the advantages of opening the disk tray are obvious (can skip or delay cutscenes in some games)
There could also be 'tricks' caused by variations in console and console environment - components that have failed or aged, a disk drive or hard drive loading slower/faster than normal, etc. Emulators don't (and shouldn't be expected to) allow for physical parameters of the underlying hardware to be specified arbitrarily.
There's also always, of course, cosmic rays flipping a bit at just the right moment to make your run faster. Wonder if anyone's ever tried to pull that off in real time.
"Physical interaction" - I included this as alone (cart swapping) as well as real life hazards (under TODO, currently kick console, cosmic ray, etc...). According to a recent post by feos (which was one of the main motivation for me creating this page), We do not allow events of the physical or hardware world to be used in TASes. Because these can't be emulated. .
Regarding this, I hope this will change. Somehow. Someway.
Components aged, failed: This is also something I believe we should take advantage of (and listed under todo). My most famous favourite malfunctioning is obviously Battletoads finishing the game by pressing the reset button.
Link to video
I don't want to go in details (as I'm more about collecting informations rather than solving it on other's behalf) but this is a case where someone played so much that the game cartridge got broken, making only him possible to do this because of sole posession.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
The actual rule, "Exceptions may be made for bad or cracked ROM images only if no good ROM images exist, or are not obtainable" isn't console specific. Many DOS games fall under the same limitation.
edit: The rule linked for that section has the title "Rules for consoles" and the aforementioned line only appears at Commodore 64.
So I think you are right and the rule text should be changed? (as well my page)
Ah I see, I should have included your's line in my page as it refers to what images to use (cracked if non cracked not available) while I mistakenly took the "use disk instead of tape" line.
Will update it. (edit2: done, moved to bottom of the page.)
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
I'm not sure if this counts, but there was that instant win SMB3 show case during one of the TASBot events. I can't seem to find the video right now, however. Anyone with info on it?
That's 'NES DPCM glitch' and already listed on the page, though it could use more information and video links if you have any!
EDIT: I thought of a good video for the 'cart swapping' section. A proof of concept, where you get ACE in one game to instantly finish a second game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xayxmTLljr8
So just for clarification, does this mean no disc swapping FMV trick in FF7, even though it has been shown to work on emulator exactly as it does on console?
ruadath:
1. Disc swapping on PSX is a built in feature (ejecting disc and inserting disc). Not to be confused eith Cart swapping on systems where the game actively uses the current media.
2. This page is only maintained by me and there can be errors like misinterpreting rules.
3. Answer to your question: it should be allowed already as a recent TAS did it.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Iirc I remember a post saying swapping blank memory cards for a certain Zelda game was "fast" in game wise due to shorter message regarding saving. Does anyone know more about this, or did I just dreamed that?
Thought of another one, it might be possible nowadays. In secret of mana, you can unplug second and third controllers to return second and third players to AI control for a while, and this is useful since the AIs don’t trigger things like cutscenes like players do. But I don’t think this is possible to TAS yet.
I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.
Current projects: NES: Tetris "fastest 999999" (improvement, with r57shell)
Genesis: Adventures of Batman & Robin (with Truncated); Pocahontas; Comix Zone (improvement); Mickey Mania (improvement); RoboCop versus The Terminator (improvement); Gargoyles (with feos)
I don't think that something should be allowed merely because it works on the console. A GameGenie works on the console, but that doesn't mean it should be allowed, for instance.
ruadath: You should ask this question in the Thread #19741: Ask a Judge. My guess is that resetting while something happens (saving) has no real obstacles to implement. This can't be said for discs / various media storages.
edit: Updated page with latest informations. edit2: except my post with ~20 submissions
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Hardware tampering is banned for good reason in my book. The examples you listed were merely stuff like kicking the console etc, however you can go much further with hardware tampering. Why not outright modify the console? Find a way to overclock a NES? I mean if you're allowing aged components why not allow straight up changing components? And at what point is it even the same system?
I do and I actually already posted these in the arbitrary framerate thread.
And not all of them are hardware quirks if you have read it, just to name a few: passwords, roms, dpcm glitch.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
@Memory
How is swapping discs hardware tampering? I find arbitrarily resetting the system and corrupting save data to be much more "damaging" to the hardware than swapping discs during gameplay.