> The SNES's controller ports can read 16 bytes of data at once, but the controllers themselves only transmit 12 bytes (4 face buttons, Start and Select, L and R, 4 directions, each taking 1 byte.) Since the controller ports can read more than the controllers can transmit, that means the 4 "blank" bytes can be used for other purposes; in the case of the recent glitched SMW submission, in combination with memory corruption, they help brute-force the game into running the ending sequence.
I think this is a really interesting example of splitting an issue.
In classical logic, there are: a) the principle of bivalence, and b) the law of the excluded middle.
We often think in binaries.
Here is my abstracted interpretation of this Mario issue, possibly modified to fit my philosophical needs:
The TAS community has to vote on a Proposition S: Should TASes be able to press the Secret Button which automatically causes a game's end sequence or <goal>?
Without knowing the meaning of S, some natural approaches to it are: Yes, No, Maybe, I Don't Know. "Yes and No".
Someone might think you can only be For or Against S.
The community decides it is against the spirit of how the game was to be played with all mass produced or commonly used or marketed official or 3rd party controllers. The community decides that such a Secret button is not academically interesting.
So the held truth of the world is that ~S is the case.
Then one day someone discovers that there is E: Extra RAM (or whatever) that allows some Exploit to trigger the end sequence or <goal> which can be programmed in with only "natural" or "naturally intended" input. This Extra RAM "belongs to" or is designated for the prohibited button. (Prohibited according to community-decided ~S.)
However, E is technically different than S. And E can be exploited without making S the case, (aka violating the ~S prohibition.)
It's important to note that at the time of the community deciding ~S, (or any conclusion on any topic), it had never crossed their mind of the difficult-to-conceive-of or not-readily-obvious "splitting-case" of E. Discussion of E may sway votes on the S issue. But at the time of the vote, say, the E issue had never crossed anyone's minds.
The answer to "Shall all or any of our TASes merely press the Secret button?" had previously had a definite "No" answer. But now, upon discovery of the thought E, it gets weaked to a "Yes and No" or a "Maybe".
There are some, call them Conservatives, who think that in the Spirit of the established ~S, the Extra RAM (or whatever) ought be prohibited, as it is just not in the Spirit of the intended game. Or that that RAM being there is a necessary but unwanted consequence of there being the Secret button, and part of our prohibition on the Secret button should be the prohibition of that Extra RAM (or whatever).
Then there are some, call them Liberals, who think that the Spirit of ~S is regarding "commonly used or marketed controllers" as opposed to "naturally inputted glitches exploiting the Extra RAM (or whatever)".
For the Liberals, the Spirit of ~S is regarding what is or is not "natural input". For the Conservatives, the spirit of ~S is or is not "what is intended as the game."
This difference in values might not have even been known, noted, or discovered, at the time of the vote for ~S. It's only at the discovery of new thought E that a civil war can start in a community, where everyone had thought that they had shared value on ~S, but it turns out the community was split on underlying principle (which had caused the consensus on ~S).
People who flip from ~S to S on account of E are called unprincipled liberals with loose morals by Conservatives.
People who stay true to ~S regardless of E are called old-fashioned [conservatives], stuck in their ways, anti-progress, on the wrong side of history, by Liberals.
> Some people think TASing isn't playing the game fairly too.
I think here is a clear example of a "linguistic dispute".
There are Person A and Person B. They are asked some ambiguous question, or some question currently thought to be unambiguous. This question is like, "Q: What do you think of TASes?"
A answers, "They're cheating" and B answers, "They're clever."
If they were to vote For or Against "T: TASes", some hold to T and others ~T. Apparently. There might actually be anger or hostility between the groups, as there actually was when TASes were first being invented, with speedrunning groups like SDA or TG.
It's only because there is the hidden Condition of "C: Trying to pass it off as a human play" which A thinks is the case or entailed by Q, whereas B obviously agrees with A given C but entirely disagrees that C is at all entailed by Q.
Q becomes deconstructed into something subtler, like, "Is a TAS cheating even if it is clearly marked as a non-human TAS?" And then general consensus is reached between the at-once-warring groups.
I think the case of whether to be Conservative or Liberal on ~S given E is exactly analogous to whether the speedrunner is to initially hold to ~T, (or to even hold to ~T after consideration of the condition of ~C).
I think the resolution is simple. There are just different classes or categories of TASes or <thing>. In the chronologically prior dispute, the <thing> was taken to be something like "fast runs" where there was disagreement about the moral value of T because of the unarticulated C. In the newly-conceived-of dispute regarding ~S and E, the moral value of exploiting E is what is in dispute.
I don't see why <thing>, (in this case "TASes" and in the chronologically-prior case might have been something like "fast runs"), has to remain a monolithic concept. We can split <thing> into facetA and facetB. Where things with or of type facetA exploit E where as things of type or with facetB do not Exploit E. As this is clearly marked, like the condition ~C, the controversy is resolved and general consensus is quickly reached in the community.
In both cases, the guiding principle or the antidote to the controversy is transparency and honesty and clearly marking and categorizing what is and is not a <thing> as relevant facets or conditions of <thing> come into public consideration.
Personally, I am turned off by frame-perfect end-sequence-triggering programming-exploit TASes. As if I want a TAS to reveal something secret or superhuman about a game, or the "intended" "spirit" of the game that is "naturally seen" or the "natural physics" of the game as "seen" by humans. For example, I can "see" that these Mario-through-walls (Mario 1) or high velocity Parallel Universe Marios (Mario 64) are not intended. Whereas, there is controversy or ambiguity regarding whether the final-level Mario 3 "through-wall" glitch was intended. Similarly, the Zelda 1 disappearing door... Even if it was born a glitch, once Nintendo issued some press release about how it's a feature, there is now controversy about whether or not it should be in the "spirit" of the intended game, or if it could be "seen" that such glitches are against the spirit of the game.
Like, really, why do I want to watch a 4 minute screen warping glitchfest of every Zelda that looks the same and I have no idea how it works or what's going on. If you get off on that and Crooked Cartridges and shit, fine, that's your fetish, not mine. But categorize everything clearly and I have no problem with you jerking off to Crooked Cartridge. One concern is, though, that community resources will get split, or worse split in favor of the glitchfest art rather than the "natural intended spirit" art, of the kind of TASes I prefer.
The Smash Bros community modded Smash Bros to add or change or fix things, because they knew what was best for the game. Were some Mario or Zelda source code open source, and it was "obvious" that there was a glitch or that something was "intended", why should the TAS community continue to TAS Mario 1 against the original source code rather than the community-approved of Mario 1 improvement source? People who prefer the glitchfest original source would be like historical reenactors. With an originalist interpretation of the Constitution (Mario 1), they think the newfangled source is heresy that has lost its way and is inauthentic. Whereas the progress community feels like whatever Mario 1 or whatever was intended with whatever virtue like "justice" or "freedom" or "love of Mario" such that today we may have a different style of interpretation than what was available to the originalists, and that this new style is superior.
I didn't read the previous 9 pages before posting, so sorry for how much has been covered already.
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Let's say, to emulate Crooked Cartridge (CC), a physics simulator is created. This is a quantum physics simulator. The entire N64 and Zelda cartridge system is recreated, and we have the computational resources to emulate CC.
Eventually it is discovered that some CC glitches are mutually exclusive when using a Newtonian simulator over the quantum simulator.
Newtonianists value creating TASes which are Newtonian, for whatever reasons or merits that goes along with Newtonianism.
The quantum simulationists, or originalists or realists or purists or Puritans or whatever, would say only the quantum simulation is "the real thing". Whereas the speedrunners will maintain that only a human with an original console is "the real thing." Until further and further and further "splitting controversies" occur, as more unconceived thoughts become conceived and brought to the public's attention, such as what is or is not a human, or what is or is not an original console, as those things which were once thought to be clear, monolithic concepts, become clarified with splitting details, which divide communities by moral or taste.
