Comix Zone (コミックスゾーン) originally released as a Sega Genesis exclusive in 1995.
This game does not require any special presentation, it is one of the late, great games of the 16-bit era, one of the best games for the Sega Genesis ever.
Interesting fact: main idea of this game was inspired by live-action pencil-sketch sequence Take On Me [dead link removed].
Characters
The Allies
Sketch Turner – main character, the cartoonist whose comic book turned against him
Roadkill - Sketch's pet rat. Roadkill is very useful sidekick, he is able to find hidden objects, and even "secret" route shortcut. Can use electrical attack and take damage to enemies. His appearance inspires such great fear in women that they lose their fighting spirit and prefer to escape. Can move between comix panels, so if Sketch left him somewhere, smart R’kill will try to rejoin team later - he will appear and wait master Sketch one of the next panels/pages. At the first page he is able to independently escaped iron rat-cage.
Alissa Cyan - She believes that Sketch is "the chosen one" who came to save their post-apocalyptic world from the evil of Mortus and the alien invaders. Ignoring Sketch's protests, Alissa sends him on his mission, keeping in touch with instructions and hints via radio. Seriusly she constantly talking. At the end she became classic "Damsel in distress" Jungian archetype.
The Villains
Mortus - main antagonist of the game he has escaped from comix to the real world. The evil mastermind of Comix Zone who draw all other enemies.
Other Villains: Gravis - This android brute appears to be dumb and slow, like to play slinky; Strigil - These green assassins can make fireballs. They have a sore throat and constantly; Cocoon with scorpion; Flying Creep - the most annoying enemy; Dragon "Big Mom"; Styx the monk; Mongoria; Fire totem; Kung-Fung; Pelagus.
Items
Knife - usefull to pull switches from far away; Dynamite - usefull to destroy objects or kill enemies. Grenade - to kill bosses fast. Ice Tea - to refill 50% health. Powe Fist - to cancel long dialogues sequences. Roadkill - not really item, but he can occupies one of slots for items. ? - any item for you choice.
[1] This is superhuman playing session, it mean having fun in progress. So movie includes many small speed/entertainment tradeoffs (less than 1 second in total), about 56 frames if be exact. Panels with tradeoffs decisions are marked asterisk (*). Here full list if anyone is interested:
Added two non-necessary attacks to Strigil before throw them off the screen in pages 1-1 and 3-2 (the faster way is simply force them jump down without violence) = 5 x 2. At page 1-2 executed cool solution with killing Gravis by dynamite at bottom area it is my favorite tradeoff (primitive upper way solution is faster) = 10. During fight against mutants at end of 1-2, if make this fight boring with minimal of motions their loading can be slightly accelerated = 5. At page 2-2 ignored one unnatural usage of paper plane to favor of more logical and pleasant for view = 2. The choice of items in episode #3: if get Ice Tea instead of Grenade to refill health in 3-1 it harm entertainment in two ways, fight with Pelagus with grenade from the ground is taking longer and looks sloppy, and also in begining 3-2 is too much useless free time, so i preferred more aesthetic way = 12. If to kill last Gravis by paper plane, box on the next screen can be destroyed, but i wanted to include fall down trick while using knife, box is needed to demonstate this trick = 6. At the very end added post-completion input to hug Alissa from behind = 11.
[2] Including 1 frame saved at score counting between 3-1 and 3-2.
[3] From year 2007, frame rate calculations used on site for sega senesis was changed from 60fps to 59.9227510135505 fps, so some small inconsistent (about 1 second) may happen if compare with publication time of old run.
Improvements & Level by Level walkthrough
EPISODE 1: "Night of the Mutants"
Page 1-1
P1. Take two items at the same time as usually.
P2. Using paper plane push both Gravis off-screen. Important is not just simply kill them, the but to push them off-screen, this way death animation/dialogues are much shorter and so arrow appear faster.
P3. Regular solution, at least at first look, but in reality all first three panels P1-P2-P3 are one very complicated setup to Roadkill Spawn Glitch on P4.
P4. Besides the fact that Roadkill miraculously escaped from cage, here also new solution with dynamite puzzle. At first use Roadkill to pull switch off-screen and when drop the dynamite in the open trapdoor, window to do it right is quite small. By the way using dynamite is cancel auto-jump reflex. Near the arrow press jump button to catch it faster.
P5*. Nothing special, throw green garbage off the screen.
P6. Well-known trapdoor skip, small optimisation - near the arrow used rolling movement to catch it faster.
P7. By fast-walking movement pushed Gravis closer to pit. Used low whirlwind kick to kill fist Creep, plus some luck manipulation to make arrow appear a little bit faster.
Page 1-2
P1. Quite peaceful panel, just destroy door with shoulder ram while Roadkill is looking for dynamite. Surprisely managed to squeeze two frames here.
P2. The biggest improvement at this page. Starts as usually, rolling to force appearance of cocoons and kill them by paper plane, now instead of waiting of Strigil used switch and he appeared faster, used another paper plane to kill him. And then use magic of switch again to make arrow appear as soon as possible (special sequence of six turns of the switch).
P3 Use knife to destroy explosive-box. Also use new slightly more effective way to skip ventilator with taking damage.
P4*. Without knife and paper plane Creeps are much harder to kill. Most efficient way to do it manipulate them to fly down, then moved box to position where they both can be killed by high scissor-kick. Grap arrow at very the lowest position to get access to bottom area of P5
P5*. Used dynamite to push Gravis off-screen by explosion, and manipulate him to throw Sketch to upper platform in the last moment of his short life. Fastly kill Creep and go back to down.
P6. Simple puzzle with clock. A few extra turns of magical switch to manipulate a bit faster appearance of arrow.
P7*. Roadkill as usually found ice tea to refill health of his master. This panel is very long, mostly consist of fight against Mutants, tried to make it entertaining to watch.
P8. At the end of P7 as always used paper plane to kill of Boss in one hit. Stand up on the barrel to cancel superhero transformation.
EPISODE 2: "Welcome to the Temple"
Page 2-1
P1. Nothing special. Roadkill is found a power-fist as usually.
P2. The first Styx is killed by Roadkill, the second is faster to kill by a paper plane, it is important to use reverse movement of paper plane, otherwise it will destroy the box with tea one the next panel.
P3. While Roadkill is looking for dynamite, Sketch is aslo getting bottle with ice tea from box. Inventory is full so Roadkill is left behind, don't worry about him, he will rejoin team later.
P4. Lured the stupid flying creep near the explosio blast. Jumped on the top stone-block to avoid an explosion.
P5-6. Nothing special. Do not forget to take Roadkill back.
P7. Many small and major changes here. At first is better position, for triple kill by paper plane, shorter window to manipulate Gravis but still possible to do it. Styx is killed by another airplane. Drink ice Tea to to refill health. Use Roadkill to scare Mongoria.
P8. At end of P7 coming down at right side of arrow to be close to the Strigil.
P9.Many changes: At the end of P8 jump up to get better starting position (a few pixels ahead). A new method of movement on the rope. Used special "body swap teleport" trick to throw Styx into the abyss (it is easy to force him suicide jump, but direct kill is much faster). Used two paper planes and to fastly kill all creeps. I like that during superhero transformation Sketch try to catch one paper plane back.
Page 2-2
P1. Skipped the gate opening mechaism.
P2. Roadkill is found a power-fist as usually. New slightly faster setup to kill Styx by Roadkill.
P3. Pseudo-lag reduction. Also manipulate last Mongoria to make backward salto to kill her by painful paper plane crash into her heel. Route change.
P4. Use Out Of Boundaries route to skip most of this panel. Need to wait for the dialogues before destoy last door or arrow will not apear at all. Saved Roadkill.
P5*. Manipulated fireballs to get right pattern. Used low whirlwind kick to destoy fire-totem.
P6*. The same paper plane just from the other side.
P7. Nothing special.
P8. Route change itself was very small timesaver, but it also alowed to save grenade which is very significant item for boss. Poor old Kung-Fung was killed by grenade and fall from page. P.S. At the end when Sketch say «Oh, Yeah», Roadkill say «Meow».
EPISODE 3: "Curse of the Dead Ships"
Page 3-1
P1. Killed all mutants by paper planes. Last paper plane is also usefull for beating Giant Carnivorous Flower on next panel.
P2. Dangerous circus trick Eaten Alive! Skipping getting dynamite.
P3. Kill the creep, and then used reversed paper planes. Wait rock destraction for offscreen to has less pseudo-lags.
P4. Turn over the scorpion. Impossible destruction of a spiked rock by shoulder ram.
P5*.We take knife and grenade.
P6* Pelagus meet grenade, both Strigils killed by paper plane.
P7. Use the knife to activate switch from the other side. Skipped barrage. Mutant is lucky to survive. Jumped up at the end just for fun.
Page 3-2
P1*. Pick up Roadkill, take a bottle of ice tea and drink it imidetely. Take the dynamite, it is necessary here to prevent scorpions appearance at P3. Used low jumps between landmines to not touch rope.
P2-3. Nothing special
P4. Turned scorpion around. New faster method of door breaking (recharged shoulder ram attack).
P5. Skipped the bomb.
P6*. Faster paper plane trick.
P7. Roadkill found the knife.
P8. Used knife to double punch - killed creep and also turn switch for door opening.
P9*. Used grenade to force Mortus to fall from page. He has different moving patterns, so it isimportant to choose the fastest. The game has two possible endings, this one is good. Hug Alissa from behind.
END
Other comments
I started planning to improve this TAS since 2015. During these years tested many improvements ideas. I pre-recorded about two dozens panels with small improvements. In total my test was almost 2000 frames faster than published TAS. Quite a decent result, but there was a fundamental problem. One particular glitch "Roadkill Spawn Glitch" was impossible to replicate.
No matter how hard i tried it always was elusive. Without RSG i considered all my other improvements as pointless, perfectionism not allowed me to make and submitt new TAS with such a shamefull flaw. I don't wanted to create a colossus with feet of clay. All or nothing.
Breakthrough happened only this year finally, it was weakly solved by using brute-force search.
Comparing to RSG, recording the rest of game was like a walk in the park.
It was a month of joy. I was really happy to finally be able to record this TAS. I hope you enjoy result of my work.
In-game time
Finishes with an in-game time of 08:28 IGT. Old TAS was 09:25 IGT.
Possible improvements
Nothing known, all panels are optimised close to death. If cancel all mentioned speed/entertainment tradeoffs game can be done in 08:27 IGT. Comix Zone is really complexity game so there's a chance that in the future new useful tricks or glitches will be discovered.
May be enemies can be manipulated to suddenly fall through floor and die after spawn? Or to make arrows to appear without killing enemies? Or to get infinity health? Or to skip long dialogues? Or something unexpected? I cannot exclude such crazy possibilities.
Special thanks
I want to say huge thanks to xoinx & XYZ, their incredible Comix Zone TAS, it was one of the first TAS movies i ever watch. To say that it impressed me is not enough; It blew my mind.
To feos and r57shell for help with Roadkill Spawn Glitch investigation.
To top3 RTA speedrunners: TGR, Anko, PacnyTHuk for their runs, and also to Mecha Richter.
To game creators: Peter Morawiec, Adrian Stephens, Howard Drossin.
To Pyrius, he has only single post on tasvideos forum, but it was usefull post!
Patashu, WST, DrBaldhead, £e Nécroyeur, Dimon12321, XTREMAL93, Maximus, moozooh, Truncated, arkiandruski, upthorn, Flip, Zer0 and EVERYONE else from TASVideos.
Screenshots
Suggested screenshots 6428 or 21674. Other screenshots just to show slices of game.
I just asked to remove one line of text which i consider non necessary to be placed in description. Hopefully my humble request can be fulfilled.
Spikestuff wrote:
Well if you have such an issue with the description and asking for an adjustment on 170 movies then create the list of those that have the very notable audio issues that Gens gives to movies such as this one.
To add similar note to them? No thanks.
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 am indifference about movie ratings, but nevertheless i was a little bit surprised that from all my TASVideos publications, Comix Zone suddenly got the lowest rating...
It is even worse than obsoleted Pinocchio! Which was in the Vault!!! LOL.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
I understand that some people have put much effort into the Bizhawk emulator.
But to me this "note" sure seems like smearing a superb TAS movie just because someone dislikes Gens. Audio issues? Where? Are those hellish sounds so bad you have to warn the viewer like it's some kind of a health hazard? Although I don't deny that Gens has somewhat buggy sound, IMHO you have to be an emulation veteran (or a still playing original console veteran) to even notice such a problem in this particular TAS.
Totally irrelevant link
My consoles: PS2 (PS1 as bw\c), NDS Lite (GBA as bw/c), 3DS XL, Wii U (vWii theoretically), PS4 slim.
My view is: If you want Gen TASers to swap to Bizhawk, then accomodate their workflows (performance/OS compatibility needs, camhacks and other scripts they rely on, etc). Otherwise you're asking for TASers to effectively make worse work by swapping to an emulator that is less performant for their use cases. Until that's no longer true, it's too early to require a switch. (This is similar to how e.g. snes9x TASes are still allowed, even though Bizhawk's SNES core is more accurate - since its performance is so much worse, it would be too excluding to mandate it.)
My view is: If you want Gen TASers to swap to Bizhawk, then accomodate their workflows (performance/OS compatibility needs, camhacks and other scripts they rely on, etc). Otherwise you're asking for TASers to effectively make worse work by swapping to an emulator that is less performant for their use cases.
This is why I originally asked why gens was used, but I think most people were frustrated when a troll answer like "Gens is love, Gens is life" was given instead of a more genuine answer.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
My view is: If you want Gen TASers to swap to Bizhawk, then accomodate their workflows (performance/OS compatibility needs, camhacks and other scripts they rely on, etc). Otherwise you're asking for TASers to effectively make worse work by swapping to an emulator that is less performant for their use cases.
This is why I originally asked why gens was used, but I think most people were frustrated when a troll answer like "Gens is love, Gens is life" was given instead of a more genuine answer.
First, it was a little joke about the "love and life meme" my intentions wasn't insult bizhawk dev team.
Second, when we give our valid points about why we still used gens, some others still said to us to do a valid asnwer of why do you really use gens. It's our personal point of view/situation a valid answer or simply a empty word for other users?
Third, it's a shame to see how the work of Archanfel is smearing only for use gens. These nonsense situations make me think on still in this community and simply quit or work off the site.
I'm a favor to remove the last words of the movie description, don't have sense unless some users have planning on mark every innacuracy on every movie on the site, seriously, we need to stop this bullsh*t.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6437
Location: The land down under.
Evil_3D wrote:
I'm a favor to remove the last words of the movie description, don't have sense unless some users have planning on mark every innacuracy on every movie on the site, seriously, we need to stop this bullsh*t.
Rehashing.
Spikestuff wrote:
Well if you have such an issue with the description and asking for an adjustment on 170 movies then create the list of those that have the very notable audio issues that Gens gives to movies such as this one.
53 of those Gens TASes are created in 2014 to 2018 so 117 of those 170 are excused.
Because Archanfel provided his submission list I'll just point it out.
He's had every chance to use BizHawk as the main emulator for Genesis since joining the site but hasn't.
Spikestuff wrote:
Spike what's with the specific time frame?
1.6.0a the Genesis Core was introduced to Hawk in 2014.
(I go further about this in the second point)
---
Evil_3D wrote:
Second, when we give our valid points about why we still used gens, some others still said to us to do a valid asnwer of why do you really use gens. It's our personal point of view/situation a valid answer or simply a empty word for other users?
Please don't play coy with me.
Let's look over this submission's discussion where it was first called out. Since we're going to play detectives.
The only person who gave a valid point whilst you and Archanfel were shitposting was WST.
Now let's jump over to the Jurassic Park.
OH MY GOD WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT.
REASONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS WITH ACTUAL DISCUSSION (and that one other comment) AND CRITICISMS.
One of those reasons that are there is "MY COMPUTER IS SHIT" (paraphrased) which is somewhat valid especially if you haven't upgraded your system in 4+ years... and I thought my oldest system was shit, but that runs Hawk fine.
Linux support is a great reason too. The push is needed for you folks to actually needs to port it to something that already has a foundation in the Linux area for the better emulator, aka lsnes. Since WINE isn't doing the job for you.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
Spike what's with the specific time frame?
1.6.0a the Genesis Core was introduced to Hawk in 2014.
I remember back then, not sure exact time but it wasn't stable and was crashing every now and then, and also it had desync issues.
Even though I have now bizhawk 1.13.0 released in Jun 2017 - it still has some issues.
And I can't run any newer version. This version is the latest that I can run.
Because I'm still using laptop from 2012 :)
So, you may run and yell that "MY COMPUTER IS SHIT".
If you require from TASers to have decent computers then I'm out.
Spikestuff wrote:
The only person who gave a valid point whilst you and Archanfel were shitposting was WST.
Please, can you describe what is valid point, and what is invalid point regarding emu selection? If there is some section in submission rules it would be best.
Spikestuff wrote:
Linux support is a great reason too. The push is needed for you folks to actually needs to port it to something that already has a foundation in the Linux area for the better emulator, aka lsnes. Since WINE isn't doing the job for you.
Are you saying that we need to force someone to write code? Sounds like a plan.
Keep in mind, for those who making TAS for themselves, their emulatior choice is not depending on TASVideos rules. Even more, nothing depends. Only their own feeling what emu and what TAS they like to do. And only by coincidence resulting TAS is acceptable here. Just because people tend to use better tools and interesting runs.
Or they are with other goal from the beginning: make TAS acceptable for TASVideos.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6437
Location: The land down under.
Considering you took it out of order and set it to your liking and well:
<r57shell> probably. I don't care :b
That. Let's just play the requotes and rehashing with some of this.
r57shell wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
The only person who gave a valid point whilst you and Archanfel were shitposting was WST.
Please, can you describe what is valid point, and what is invalid point regarding emu selection? If there is some section in submission rules it would be best.
Please, can you describe what is a valid point to when people are literally shitposting on this discussion board about a Shrek is Love, Shrek is Life copypasta it would be best.
And a note, you dropped this when returning a point just then:
Spikestuff wrote:
Let's look over this submission's discussion where it was first called out. Since we're going to play detectives.
As well as literally next paragraph:
Spikestuff wrote:
Now let's jump over to the Jurassic Park.
OH MY GOD WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT.
REASONS AND JUSTIFICATIONS WITH ACTUAL DISCUSSION (and that one other comment) AND CRITICISMS.
And guess what. All talks about emulation was mainly placed there not here.
The point I put forth was about actual discussion on WHY Gens was being used, not tinfoil hat discussions.
My points are pretty much covered by those who pretty much said accuracy would be nice with the emulator. If you wanted a valid point to emu selection. Which you were quick to dismiss.
---
r57shell wrote:
Are you saying that we need to force someone to write code? Sounds like a plan.
Congrats on volunteering yourself.
There was work on this being done for this but progress of that is similar to a broken down coaster.
(Alternatively build a new one from scratch rather than porting to a foundation.)
---
And I'll just pinpoint this one, since the entire bit is just garbage.
r57shell wrote:
Even though I have now bizhawk 1.13.0 - it still has some issues.
Please don't play coy with me.
Let's look over this submission's discussion where it was first called out. Since we're going to play detectives.
I'm not playing here.
Spikestuff wrote:
The only person who gave a valid point whilst you and Archanfel were shitposting was WST.
My experience using both emulators was the same as WST, just removing the Linux factor.
Spikestuff wrote:
One of those reasons that are there is "MY COMPUTER IS SHIT" (paraphrased) which is somewhat valid especially if you haven't upgraded your system in 4+ years... and I thought my oldest system was shit, but that runs Hawk fine.
I'm not going to buy a new PC just to run Bizhawk here, specially with the inflation in my country don't allow me currently. I'm talking serious when the emulator runs awfully slow when I have to open his tools.
Spikestuff wrote:
Linux support is a great reason too. The push is needed for you folks to actually needs to port it to something that already has a foundation in the Linux area for the better emulator, aka lsnes. Since WINE isn't doing the job for you.
If I have to choice, I'll choce to upgrade gens to gpx-plus core, add TAS Studio/RAM search and improve the avi dumper. But heh, I'm not a programmer yet to try.
r57shell wrote:
Keep in mind, for those who making TAS for themselves, their emulatior choice is not depending on TASVideos rules. Even more, nothing depends. Only their own feeling what emu and what TAS they like to do. And only by coincidence resulting TAS is acceptable here. Just because people tend to use better tools and interesting runs.
This is how I started in TASing, and surely the majority. I never imagined I would end up debating something like this, even with my low presence in the forums.
Just for the record, my thoughts on the actual TAS has never and will never be changed by the fact that Gens was used. I still have a high appreciation for the work that Archanfel puts into his movies, as well as the other TASers who do choose Gens.
While I disagree with their choice of emulator, I never intended to let that change my thoughts on what they do and how much effort they put into their movies.
[14:15] <feos> WinDOES what DOSn't
12:33:44 PM <Mothrayas> "I got an oof with my game!"
Mothrayas Today at 12:22: <Colin> thank you for supporting noble causes such as my feet
MemoryTAS Today at 11:55 AM: you wouldn't know beauty if it slapped you in the face with a giant fish
[Today at 4:51 PM] Mothrayas: although if you like your own tweets that's the online equivalent of sniffing your own farts and probably tells a lot about you as a person
MemoryTAS Today at 7:01 PM: But I exert big staff energy honestly lol
Samsara Today at 1:20 PM: wouldn't ACE in a real life TAS just stand for Actually Cease Existing
@Spikestuff
I just asked to have standard movie description for Comix Zone without excessive note on emulation flaws to be equal with hundreds of other published movies descriptions. But instead of it you continue oppression of Gens users.
r57shell wrote:
Keep in mind, for those who making TAS for themselves, their emulatior choice is not depending on TASVideos rules. Even more, nothing depends. Only their own feeling what emu and what TAS they like to do. And only by coincidence resulting TAS is acceptable here.
Exactly. From day one when i learned how to record TAS i doing them for myself. Here my old quote about it:
Archanfel wrote:
Изначально делал просто так для самого себя, но получилось на удивление годно - такое не стыдно и людям показать :)
RU-EN translation:
Initially i did it just for myself, but it turned out good enough so it’s not a shame to show my work for people here :)
So TASVideos is just a good place to share my works with people who also have interest in superhuman playing. If they are no more welcome here, i can simply stop submit them.
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)
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6437
Location: The land down under.
Archanfel wrote:
I just asked to have standard movie description for Comix Zone without excessive note on emulation flaws to be equal with hundreds of other published movies descriptions.
And I asked you to create a list for movies to enjoy this lovely note. If you have a problem with it.
(To which you responded "No Thanks.")
---
Archanfel wrote:
But instead of it you continue oppression of Gens users.
Have a boat.
⛵
It floats.
(For the ones that don't get it: Whatever floats your boat.)
For an actual response to this bit.
Have you seen the notes provided on PCSX-rr/PSXjin TASes?
Heck, I'm currently going over the entire batch just to add more notes for some of them.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
This thread seems to be getting out of hand. I want to summarize basically what kinds of emulators we accept from and why.
We generally prefer emulators that are accurate, easy to use and easy to encode from. Accurate emulators generally have less problems with games ranging from graphical to audio bugs and are more likely to sync on consoles. Currently Genplus-GX is limited to simply Windows so we still accept Gens. If support of Genplus-GX increases, Gens will eventually be deprecated due to issues with accuracy and encoding annoyances with dropped frames on resolution changes. We need to make things as easy on our publishing team as possible but we obviously do not want to unnecessarily limit the amount of people that can TAS a given system.
If you simply prefer Gens due to nostalgic reasons, you will at some point be disappointed because we must rule out emulators that have eventually become outdated. Various other emulators have become deprecated for similar reasons.
I do not know if the note is warranted in this case and do not know if there is much precedent for such but I am not part of the publishing team. I do think passive aggressive attempts at getting people to switch emulators is counter productive however and should probably cease. The best way to get people to switch is as stated to increase support.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Evil_3D wrote:
Third, it's a shame to see how the work of Archanfel is smearing only for use gens. These nonsense situations make me think on still in this community and simply quit or work off the site.
Archanfel wrote:
So TASVideos is just a good place to share my works with people who also have interest in superhuman playing. If they are no more welcome here, i can simply stop submit them.
We absolutely cannot let TASers quit the site over a note in a movie description. Reaching this point means that we all have had a lot of misconceptions about things, and likely about one another.
Evil_3D and Archanfel, please do not quit the site over this argument, it will be resolved in a proper way, I've done it before, I'll do it now. I will edit this post with more insights ASAP, this was just the most important announcement I needed to make.
First of all, we should look back to what actually caused this.
Lately, emulation accuracy has become a huge trend, a good one! The very fact that we've seen Arbitrary Code Execution executed on an authentic console has been my dream ever since dwangoAC started considering running his first TASBlock. Then it actually happened, and TASBlocks became a highlight of a GDQ event, and a lot of people were introduced to TASing.
Recently, with the help from Alyosha and lots of other amazing people, we took emulator accuracy to even higher levels, and the site has officially acknowledged accuracy to console as one of our goals, this is why we can now host 2 versions of a movie right in the publication module: the one that's been published originally, and the one that resyncs all the events to run on console too.
Endless bugs in old and bad emulators, like PCSX, Mupen, all the plugin insanity, taught us: if we want the TAS community to move forward, we eagerly need good emulators. And sometimes it requires to let go of the old and bad ones. That way we banned some really bad ones, in favor of better replacements that are so much easier to work with. And we know sometimes they are slow.
But it is important to remember, that if the site has not banned some emulator, its use should not be oppressed. The very fact that we still allow it comes from unpleasant reality: there's no real replacement, and it doesn't matter which part of it is so unique and dear to someone.
Emulators that are not banned for submissions, are allowed for use.
Now, there is of course emulator preference. People who can afford running good emulators with no sacrifices may be called lucky. Others often have to give up on something they are used to. And some others outright can not work in the new emulators productively. This is important. We want TAS authors to be comfortable, because this lets them focus on creativity and hard work rather than on fighting with the workflow all the time. The latter is dangerous, because it may demotivate someone from creating a masterpiece. Of course you can't demotivate a true geek, but on the other hand, why should we be making people's lives harder in the first place? Just let them do the job the way they want, and the way we allow, as long as the result is good and they're happy!
So what do we do with emulator preferences? If we simply yell at people who don't have (or don't provide) bullet-proof reasons for using an older emulator, it really helps no one. Encouraging doesn't work that way. When someone beats up you for writing with the left hand, it doesn't make you really want to switch over. We should keep in mind that there are different situations that should be handled differently.
If someone simply doesn't know what to use, better, newer, and more accurate emulators are the default choice. If someone can't really decide, we may try to help them decide, but only by hearing out their needs. If someone can't use a better one, it's still their right not to use that, as long as the old one is still accepted. Finally, if using a newer emu is possible, but not as pleasant, come on, just leave them alone! Disagree with them and still acknowledge this is their right.
So how do we handle this and similar movie descriptions? I'm convinced things like missing music, graphics, cutscenes, other major bugs that stick out, may be mentioned in the description. Minor bugs should not be mentioned, because people may miss them entirely if they're not veterans of the scene, as DrBaldhead put it, and such a note only confuses people and hints them to try to spot those bugs they would otherwise miss, distracting from the TAS qualities of the movie.
As a Starman, I can see everyone's rating, which is reported on the Staff page. I won't be discussing rates people marked as private/hidden, and I encourage people to rate the actual contents of the movie regardless of personal issues behind it, yet at the same time, I disagree with the current rating system altogether, and I really think it should not be taken to seriously. I rated the movie too, the way I feel about it. I also see why using Gens might have upset people in this one case, which probably killed the entertainment factor for them. That still doesn't mean ratings should be used as a revenge really.
Officially, we do not mind people giving crazy rating to things. We care about having their input in the first place, so we should be glad we have this data at all. But when we make a decision about tiers and stuff, we judge outlier rates as noise. So please, no worries about rates that look unfair. Community as a whole gives this movie 7.3 for entertainment, and it's still fairly recent. And please don't mind the outliers.
All in all, considering the above notes on emulation glitch borderline that we want to announce, as well as the confusion caused by this note here, I'll remove it. Because the glitch is not as blatant, obvious, and damaging as missing music, visuals, or cutscenes.
Opinions?
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
If it's not severe enough that it's painfully obvious to the average user, it shouldn't be put there in the first place. Based on the fact that nobody generally agrees on it, it seems quite clear that it's not painfully obvious and shouldn't be there. The fact that it's also been an incredibly controversial point further leads to my thought that we should remove this without delay.
I agree with feos's post entirely. Well spoken. In one sentence - don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. If it's not feasible for everyone to use the most accurate emulator (due to secondary reasons, like OS compatibility, slowness or script/workflow compatibility) then don't demand it until the roadblocks are fixed, or instead of a good TAS you get no TAS at all.
About this TAS's ratings: This is the only TAS I can recall that made me feel physically irritated while trying to watch it. Something about how the art style combines with the movement just made it painful for my brain. So I really am not at all surprised if it gets low entertainment ratings, even if technically impressive.
Gens and emulators: When I first started TASing I thought emulators were already perfect. I was introduced to the concept of emulators from SMW ACE, so I guess I just assumed the same capability existed for other systems. It was quite shocking to see how bad things actually were. While at first I wasn't much bothered by it, as time went on my opinion hardened on the issue of accuracy, to the point where if something had no chance of working on console, then I basically consider it pointless to even make. Why bother making something wrong? It just seems like wasted effort. I know this is an untenable position from the sites perspective. Honestly though, we really shouldn't be having genesis audio issues now, there are several very high accuracy genesis emulators to learn from. So, I don't see the harm in pointing out why things aren't quite right in the movie description.
Evil_3D and Archanfel, please do not quit the site over this argument.
I will not do it
I know that the deprecation of gens will happen soon or latter, but let us do our super-human movies here the remaining life time of gens. It's hard/frustrating moving to other emulator when you have accustomed to a constant-productive workflow on this emu.
Joined: 10/6/2011
Posts: 1697
Location: RU · ID · AM
Also, TASing is still just a hobby for most people here.
You should not force someone to use certain tool because it’s not a job and not a boss/worker relation.
Better to make the tool itself look attractive for more TAS artisans. That’s the way kindly mentioned by upthorn.
S3&A [Amy amy%] improvement (with Evil_3D & kaan55) — currently in SPZ2
my TAS channel · If I ever come into your dream, I’ll be riding an eggship :)
Extremely late to the party, but holy crap was that a crazy ride! So impressed that someone found a way to improve on the run so drastically.
Hats off to Archanfel... CZ is such a pain to run just because of all the randomness and lag, and to find all the new tricks and game breaks. AWESOME STUFF!
A wizard is never late, nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.
xoinx wrote:
but holy crap was that a crazy ride! So impressed that someone found a way to improve on the run so drastically.
Hats off to Archanfel... CZ is such a pain to run just because of all the randomness and lag, and to find all the new tricks and game breaks. AWESOME STUFF!
I am glad that you like it! Your approval is very valuable for me. Thank you.
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)
