Memory
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feos wrote:
Proposed addition to http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#Vault_2
Max score The goal of obtaining maximum possible score for a Vault movie is allowed under the following conditions only:
  • A "max score" movie reaching higher score than its predecessor can only obsolete it if it loses no time over it.
  • A "max score" movie of the same length as its predecessor should reach higher score to obsolete it.

I think this solves the problem with "infinite score" runs trying to obsolete "max score" runs after new tricks get discovered: you have to be slower in corresponding parts of the movie to get potentially infinite score, and we'd disallow it to be slower, even if it allows to get more score.
My one problem with this is in the event where it is discovered how to make it past a kill screen, yet reaches a kill screen further down the line. Would we still require the run to end at the old kill screen point?
[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
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It shouldn't reach that old screen later than the old movie, we'd just demand additional content on top of that former kill screen.
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.
Noxxa
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feos wrote:
  • A "max score" movie reaching higher score than its predecessor can only obsolete it if it loses no time over it.
I'm really not a fan of this idea - it essentially sets a time cap on a max score run once the first publication of it is made. If later on a score improvement is found at the cost of time, no matter the scale (even if it's just a single point that makes the run take one second longer), it would not be publishable per this rule. Then you get the situation where the run category you have isn't actually "max score" but really just "reach this arbitrarily published score", which is a poor fit for the Vault (and a poor fit for publication in general). I understand that this idea came about to fix other issues/loopholes with potential score publications, but it also just brings its own issues.
http://www.youtube.com/Noxxa <dwangoAC> This is a TAS (...). Not suitable for all audiences. May cause undesirable side-effects. May contain emulator abuse. Emulator may be abusive. This product contains glitches known to the state of California to cause egg defects. <Masterjun> I'm just a guy arranging bits in a sequence which could potentially amuse other people looking at these bits <adelikat> In Oregon Trail, I sacrificed my own family to save time. In Star trek, I killed helpless comrades in escape pods to save time. Here, I kill my allies to save time. I think I need help.
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I think a better way to phrase it would be: A "max score" movie reaching higher score than its predecessor can only obsolete it if it loses no time over it *in sections that are directly comparable.* That is, it has to be technically as good as the previous run in terms of speed. This is similar to the rule where time losses due to things outside your control (like cutscenes being longer when you change language or adding lag frames by swapping emulators) aren't counted against you.
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Just to clarify, I'm looking for, generally, a "score first, time second" mentality. If just one more scoring action is found to be possible, I don't care if it adds minutes just to get that one action in. That is where my opinion rests. Though, if the rest of the movie slows down for no apparent reason in seemingly unrelated parts nowhere near the added scoring action, it better have an explanation for that. In a purely hypothetical thought, if a 100% run were found to actually be incomplete, and there are parts that should have been included, then we would absolutely accept a much, much slower 100% run that better fits the definition the prior run failed to meet. With the stipulation that if the rest of the movie slows down for no apparent reason... yeah just like the statement above. That is, however, my impression of TASVideos. Judges and admins are free to refute this point and I would have no defense. We obviously don't allow infinite% runs. So endless scoring environments should be discouraged. A finite stage count in an otherwise endless game is already done for time-based goals, maybe we can look for ways to max out score in those stages as a 100%-like goal? Extending the same stage to extend scoring resources indefinitely breaks this, so naturally, glitches, tricks, or just plain normal game mechanics should be restricted as is sensible to prevent it. It can also be decided the game isn't appropriate for high score, how many Super Mario World runs are done for high score? Should endless scoring stop at the game's programmed score cap? I call that "targeted scoring," and I would advise using caution when designing rules around it. Should we publish a 99 score Desert Bus run? That's its score cap. And we all know it takes a long time to accomplish. It can probably be refused based on triviality, but then we have a Punch-Out!! run I like to keep pointing out which isn't as trivial to max out its score through the clock stop. And it would also take a rather long time to hit that cap. At least River Raid has the advantage of having an ending for hitting the score cap, such as it is for one of those old Atari games. In that case, the usual Vault rules can apply, and is currently doing so last I checked. Anyway, I'm happy to see more activity here. I would like to see the results, whatever they are.
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Okay yes I don't have any good arguments pro "either score or time must be better and none is allowed to be worse. It feels like a workaround and it's not clear what problem it actually fixes. With infinite score environments, just like we ban certain techniques from 100%, we can ban certain techniques for max score. For example any technique that would allow scoring more points until the counter saturates or overflows can be disallowed. For some games that would lead to no way of having a max score run, and I guess that's acceptable. New draft (the clause about ending-less games is identical to what we already have for all cases, so I dropped it):
Max score The goal of obtaining maximum possible score for a Vault movie is allowed under the following conditions only:
  • There is no way to define full completion for that game, because there is no way to collect or complete "all X" for any given criterion, aside from fastest completion.
    • If a way to define full completion is discovered later on, a movie that does it obsoletes the "max score" run that is in Vault.
  • Techniques that allow overflowing or saturating the score count (infinite scoring environments) should not be used.
  • Like with full completion, score must be gained by the in-game means and not by memory manipulation glitches.

The problem that still remains for me is that game completion may require techniques allowing infinite scoring, or at least some variation of those. If a certain in-game action allows you to complete the game, but also can be used to score infinitely, of course we can just ban such games from vaultable max score. But what if an in-game action is required for completion, but only a slight variation of it scores infinitely? Like, imagine you score infinitely if you go left, and you only score 100 if you go right, and either option wins the game. Calling the latter "max score" feels really dumb. But what's dumber is how tiny the difference between allowed and banned in-game actions can be. Add to the equation discovering only after publication that some of those actions can score infinitely: <Masterjun> in other words, we cannot ban games based on dynamic things such as the techniques <Masterjun> (because we inevitably run into a situation where we have to ban a game after a publication) This fundamental ambiguity doesn't seem to be eligible for vault at all.
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.
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There's my demon again -- The potential of an endless glitch or technique being discovered after publication. That turns the game into an endless scoring environment, making it impossible to properly obsolete when the next run itself could be trivially obsolete by just doing that endless trick a little longer. It gets worse if it's a combination of techniques that allows for it. Which one to ban? Mario's deaths, or his ability to collect 1-ups? Stopping either would be enough to make his visit to each stage in Super Mario Bros. a finite one. This stopped me earlier. And so far, this barrier is proving very solid. And my best answer so far is to rely on the apparent community to judge if it's appropriate, which is just not the rigid structure Vault would like.
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There's an option of just allowing infinite scoring. No technique would have to be banned (aside from memory manipulation), and the score would actually not be infinite since it either overflows or saturates, and the run is meant to end after that. But movies could last for several days.
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.
Memory
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Movies could last for several days anyways if you chose a long enough game. TOCA 2: Electric Boogaloo
[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
Alyosha
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Personally I don't like the idea of trying to limit tricks that allow infinite score. If infinite score is possible, then that game simply doesn't have a maximum score, no such run would exist for it. If a game was published with a thought to be maximum score run and that game was later found to have infinite score potential, then just kill off the category and obsolete it with any other category, maybe just with an explanation of the technique and why the maximum score category is now dead.
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Alyosha wrote:
If a game was published with a thought to be maximum score run and that game was later found to have infinite score potential, then just kill off the category and obsolete it with any other category, maybe just with an explanation of the technique and why the maximum score category is now dead.
The whole reason we're having this talk is games with no way to have goals other than any%. Vault only allows full completion and fastest completion, and for some games full completion is impossible because you can't complete "all X". So if a movie like this gets invalidated, there will be nothing to obsolete it with.
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.
Alyosha
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Yes exactly, the only remaining valid category would be any%, so any% would obsolete it.
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If we have to unpublish a movie that way, it means our rules are not making too much sense, especially those that are meant to be as solid as possible (Vault rules).
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.
Alyosha
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It's not the rules fault if game knowledge is incomplete. The rules themselves would be quite clear; if you think a game has a maximum score but it later turns out not to, then the category is dead and your run is obsolete. At least in my mind, this is very solid and straight forward. But I also have no qualms about 'unpublishing' things, so this makes the most sense to me.
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A "max score" movie reaching higher score than its predecessor can only obsolete it if it loses no time over it.
This makes "max score" no different from "fastest completion", because a fastest completion run can't be obsoleted by a run with higher score unless it completes the game at least as fast.
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I dropped that part, see above.
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.
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I'd suggest going as simple as "max score runs are only vaultable in games where there's a hard limit to the score". Most games have some way to infinitely grind score, but in those that don't, it's a goal that's defined objectively enough to make for a good target. (Often this would become the 100% definition for the game, but it might have a separate definition: Wario Land 4 is a good example, with a concrete maximum score on each level but a 100% definition that doesn't require it. Of course, maximum score on Wario Land 4 would be unvaultable because you can infinitely grind score by playing levels more than once.)
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I believe maximum score can be a valid goal in the following cases. 1) game has no infinite leech and has a kill screen. in this case, score by reaching the kill screen at all, then by score, then by time. THis is what the Bongo TAS does. it reaches the kill screen, scoring as much as believed possible. If someone can reach a later screen and score more, that obsoletes regardless of time. if same screen is reached, greater score obsoletes regardless of time. If same score and screen are reached, and time is faster, this obsoletes. simple rules. Donkey Kong arcade is the same way. there's a kill screen, and limited live so infinite leach is not possible. so it can be score attacked. The RTA competition for this game is a score attack that reaches kill screen. TAS can certainly do better with luck manipulation (for more points from hammer smashes), better reflexes, and more point pressing. lose all but one life on the screen that gives the most points. If not entertaining enough, this is vaultable. If it's entertaining it goes to moons. 2) alternatively, if the game has an end, and it cannot be counterstopped, and infinite leech is not possible, maximum score while beating the game is a valid goal. it may or may not be entertaining. I'm not sure if such a game should be vaultable. This is often same as 100%. Endless games are not valid for max score, IMHO. Games where infinite leech is possible are also not valid for max score. I'd personally rule that 1 and 2 have it as valid goal, but only 1 is vaultable, with 2 as a moon if sufficiently entertaining. Note that for games that DO have the ability to counterstop, fastest counterstop is a valid goal that is well defined. Sega Tetris (any of the arcade versions) is the classic example. But superhuman skill is not required to do it for this game. It is entertaining and fast if you are trying to max score only. Should such a TAS be vaultable? I'm not sure. It should be non trivial, and show superhuman skill or luck manipulation. If so, i'd consider it for vault if it's not entertaining.
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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.
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feos wrote:
Here's our updated text: http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#MaximumPoints
Maybe it's worth mentioning that saturation is allowed in Moons as a "max score" run, e.g. the various Tetris games.
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The Tetris run didn't complete the game, and it was accepted only because it was immensely entertaining for a lot of people (even tho it's just the same pattern repeated over and over). It counts as max score, but not as a vaultable replacement for full completion.
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.
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feos wrote:
The Tetris run didn't complete the game, and it was accepted only because it was immensely entertaining for a lot of people (even tho it's just the same pattern repeated over and over). It counts as max score, but not as a vaultable replacement for full completion.
MovieRules wrote:
Saturation (maxing out the counter) and overflow (dropping from high value to zero or negative) do not count as "max score".
Yes. You say that it counts as max score, and the MovieRules page says it does not count as max score (and in a section that "talks about all tiers"). So my suggestion is to clarify the latter.
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Full completion rules: Maximum points wrote:
Maximum points or score is allowed as a full-completion category under the following conditions:
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.
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feos wrote:
Best ending is a good variation of full completion, and in this case it happens to be score oriented as well. Playing further would make the goal arbitrary indeed.
I disagree. Well, okay. We have an ending available based on having sufficient score. That I don't disagree with. As far as targeting best endings go, we're going for fastest completion of reaching this score threshold then the ending. We're no longer measuring this goal as a score metric, we're measuring it as a time metric, as targeting the ending means it's impossible to obsolete it with a longer time, but higher score. I have a personal disagreement that a score threshold ending takes priority as "full completion" over maximum score.
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FatRatKnight wrote:
I disagree. Well, okay. We have an ending available based on having sufficient score. That I don't disagree with. As far as targeting best endings go, we're going for fastest completion of reaching this score threshold then the ending. We're no longer measuring this goal as a score metric, we're measuring it as a time metric, as targeting the ending means it's impossible to obsolete it with a longer time, but higher score. I have a personal disagreement that a score threshold ending takes priority as "full completion" over maximum score.
The Best ending goal doesn't have to be related to scoring, it's just one of the standard full completion categories we've always allowed for Vault as long as it actually represents some fullness. It does in this case, so there's an acceptable full completion definition already. Which means we don't have to go for max score to have a vaultable full completion publication. If you disagree with that then you also disagree with
There is no other way to define full completion for the game, because there is no way to collect or complete "all X" for any given criterion, aside from fastest completion.
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.