Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Dimon12321 wrote:
I want to make a TAS where I kill all the enemies and find all the secrets in all the levels, aka 100% run. Unfortunately, the game has several sections where enemies spawn infinitely and the player is forced to run away. Are such remarks acceptable if I submit a TAS under "100%" branch, or it's more reasonable to restrict the goal from "100%" to "All secrets" or something like that?
If the game doesn't have an internal percentage counter, we don't use "100%". Whether "all secrets" is a fitting goal depends on the nature of the game. Killing enemies is not a sensible goal if they respawn infinitely. For full completion goals, here are the requirements:
http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html#FullCompletionRules
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.
Would you mind turning this into some kind of a picture? This game is apparently so complicated that it'd be really hard to comprehend or explain to others with just pure text.
Good job on me for completely forgetting about this discussion for 10 months and only now getting back to it. I can see that my original post to try and explain the structure of this game was pretty needlessly overcomplicated, so I'll just post an image of the main menu here for ease of understanding.
https://imgur.com/a/ywNJMl3
The various gamemodes available to play are split into four categories here; Party Games, Pair Games, and House Party. House Party is probably the category of games that is least acceptable for TASVideos, for the reason that its gameplay doesn't even take place within Wii Party itself, but typically involves something such as hiding the WiiMotes around the room while the other players try to find them. There's no opportunity for superplay here.
Every single one of the Party Games and Pair Games are structured differently from one another. They all make use of the minigames, which are selected at random based on what type of minigame is needed. Obviously having a separate branch for every single one of these gamemodes would be far too many, so I feel that these could potentially be split into a simple "All Party Games" and "All Pair Games" branch. Worth noting is that Mii of a Kind has an option to select either a 3-round or 5-round game, and Balance Boat has unlockable levels of both hgiher difficulty (boats with more difficult configurations to place the Miis on that ultimately won't affect the TAS gameplay considerably) and "Time Attack" for each of these difficulties where players have to put randomly generated Miis on the boat as fast as possible without it toppling over. I am unsure of how these would be expected to be handled in such branches.
The minigames have their own sub-menu like House Party, with the options Free Play, Battle, Solo, Challenge and Rule Reversal. Once again these all operate on different rules, so I'll try and stick to a brief summary for each. Free Play allows one to play different minigames at their own leisure, Battle involves playing random minigames against each other until someone comes out victorious. Solo involves going through a long sequence of random minigames with a limited amount of health that can be lost through losing a minigame (with different difficulties). Challenge has some minigames which are like pre-determined "levels" of difficulty to try and push through either alone or in a pair, and others which are more like score attacks. Rule Reversal is like Battle, but with a random cheater selected that others have to try and spot.
Battle and Rule Reversal are probably the least interesting of the bunch because "battling it out in random minigames" is already something seen across the regular gamemodes. Solo and Challenge are ones that are somewhat more interesting, but I'm unsure how acceptable they would be considered for TASVideos. I have actually been working on and off on an "All Minigames Playaround" TAS that simply goes through all the minigames in Free Play while aiming to be as entertaining as possible, but I've recently become more concerned about the potential entertainment value of this, alongside very little audience feedback to go off of. I'd appreciate knowing whether this would actually be interesting enough to watch to make Moons tier so I can better consider how to move forward with the project.
Here's a playlist for the WIPs I've released so far (WIP 5 marks a complete restart of the project, so you're better off just starting there and not worrying about the previous ones).
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4e4GsHUROUXhWlILIbiabvsxgU8_XfsC
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
InputEvelution wrote:
Solo involves going through a long sequence of random minigames with a limited amount of health that can be lost through losing a minigame (with different difficulties).
Does it end if you don't lose health?
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.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
How and when does it end? Does it go through all minigames?
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.
How and when does it end? Does it go through all minigames?
How long it takes to end depends on the difficulty level. Beginner has 5 minigames, Intermediate has 10, and Expert has 50. The minigames are selected randomly from the available 4-player, 1v1 and 1v3 minigames, of which there's 57 in total, so you'll never quite end up going through all minigames (never mind that there's also 22 Pair minigames not covered at all by this mode). It ends with you reaching the final rocket and flying off from the game board.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
That finally sounds like a game mode with an ending. We pick difficulty depending on whether harder mode would introduce more repetition while not leading to more interesting gameplay. If each minigame you play is unique, then there's no repetition, and hardest is the right choice. That'd be any%, at least for that mode. If there's a way to play all minigames for pure speed, that could be another branch.
"All Party Games" and "All Pair Games" sound like acceptable branches too after all. Within them you can either aim for fullness or for shortness, as long as you play all the mandatory games.
Regarding the playarounds, I'd like to see more variety in how characters act: one char would do things the intended way, one would pick all the absurd options, others could act like some kind of a team, but without the goal to go the intended path. I imagine how hard it would be to control characters independently at the same time, so I'm not sure how to pull this off, but what I've seen in the current WIPs wasn't stunning honestly.
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.
I would appreciate a judge's input about the issue brought up in this post of the Dream Team Contest 9 thread. The question is whether or not a level skip button combination is allowed for a run aiming for Arbitrary Code Execution/Memory Corruption/SRAM Glitch/Game End Glitch/Wrong Warp Glitch. The game's developer considers the button combination cheating in 1-player mode but not 2-player mode (sources here under controls and here). DTC9 uses one of the game's 2-player modes. My thought is that the button combination is allowed for those categories in 2-player runs because of the explicit mention from the developer. If I'm wrong, however, I'll change the DTC9 rule. Thanks!
Do you even have to play any stages if you do this?
[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
The combo takes you to the next or previous level but loops from level 1 to level 21 and vice versa. So you have to complete level 21 in order to reach the trophy screen.
What's the point of the anti-cheating policy if you can use level-select to navigate to a specific level? Even if said navigation doesn't directly bring you to the trophy screen (for instance, if memory corruption was possible in one specific level), how does that make cheating allowed? It would seem to me that allowing this as an exception to the cheating rules would make the cheating rules arbitrary. On the other hand, deciding something's "cheating" when we allow things U+D and L+R and major game-breaking glitches is in-itself an arbitrary decision we made for entertainment reasons. But I think there's something of a line here between intended functionality (the level select) and unintended functionality (the other things I mentioned).
----
As for the question of whether it is really cheating:
I think the developer's intent in not marking level select as cheating for multiplayer mode is to allow the players to repeat levels or skip levels if they're familiar with the game. Which is fine, but it's still a level select.
Developer's intent only goes so far: if a developer said a TAS of their game was entertaining enough for Moons, that doesn't mean we'd automatically put a TAS of their game into Moons tier. Our rules should be able to make nuanced evaluations and not simply rely on what someone says.
And furthermore: there's already a distinction being made in the DTC contest rules that suggests it's cheating: the rules ban use of the level select for non-ACE purposes. So if it's not cheating, why ban it?
And furthermore: there's already a distinction being made in the DTC contest rules that suggests it's cheating: the rules ban use of the level select for non-ACE purposes. So if it's not cheating, why ban it?
The ban for non-ACE purposes is to enforce the "complete all 21 levels" goal.
I TASed the Cavern of Remembrance run from KH2FM. I TASed the game and managed to avoid desyncs. I wonder if the run itself is okay? I actually did the TAS to beat the PS4 RTA time even with the PS2 long load time and boot time. It was beaten though. And also, I applied a patch called HDfication and English patch of the game. Nothing game changing other than the improved UIs and English text.[/submission]
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
For the purposes of site submission...
PCSX2-rr is not supported by the site: You can't even submit movies made with it yet, as they wouldn't be recognized by the submission parser
Translation patches are not allowed even if it were able to be submitted. Cosmetic patches are not allowed either, though if the run syncs without them then they can be used for special encodes and such
Just aiming to beat an RTA run isn't enough, you have to optimize it as much as possible before submitting
Keep in mind that this is all only for a formal site submission. If you did it just to do it and host it on YouTube or some other video host, there's absolutely nothing wrong with it or any other TAS. You can talk about it or show it off here on the forums (there's a thread for KH2 here), but once you make a formal submission, it falls under the site rules and will be judged accordingly.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 10/12/2011
Posts: 6437
Location: The land down under.
The branch you're referring to is only a small section in a rather large game. It requires a verification TAS of KHFM2 to be considered.
IMHO if a KHFM2 TAS was done that features this boss rush are it would be something considered for a 100% branch not an arbitrary branch.
Translation Patches are banned.
- - - - -
PCSX2-RR is not stable.
Just because it syncs for one game doesn't mean it's sync safe for others without careful planning (and it's been proven).
There is improvement to the emulator I admit, but it isn't justifiable.
BizHawk devs are looking into implementing up and coming DobieStation into the multicore emulator with TAS tools support.
It's just that, that emulator's crux is that it's relatively new, and quite slow at emulation and at the current point is more of a consideration.
However, that emulator has quite the support and might be a submitable TASing emulator in the future.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
Thanks thanks. The translation + cosmetics is actually just off by 2 frames after loading a save when played on the unpatched one. Well, nice to know that. Also, while I did say I've beating the PS4 RTA time, I did optimized it well, playing frame by frame, removing unnecessary movements, making strats possible only in a TAS. Is that actually what it means to optimize?
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
It's hard to judge a run's level of optimization without seeing it, but yeah, what you described is a great start. For a proper submission in the future, you'll just want to go as deep as possible doing that, making sure everything is as precise and as fast as you can possibly make it. We're not going to reject over mere frames of improvement or anything (we even accept runs with fairly large known improvements in specific cases), but the closer to perfect you get on a submission, the better.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11475
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Dacicus wrote:
I would appreciate a judge's input about the issue brought up in this post of the Dream Team Contest 9 thread. The question is whether or not a level skip button combination is allowed for a run aiming for Arbitrary Code Execution/Memory Corruption/SRAM Glitch/Game End Glitch/Wrong Warp Glitch. The game's developer considers the button combination cheating in 1-player mode but not 2-player mode (sources here under controls and here). DTC9 uses one of the game's 2-player modes. My thought is that the button combination is allowed for those categories in 2-player runs because of the explicit mention from the developer. If I'm wrong, however, I'll change the DTC9 rule. Thanks!
Note that, if the feature accessible in that way is suggested explicitly by the game itself or mentioned in the manual as a normal means of playing, such as level restart shortcuts in the Legend of Zelda or Metroid, it is usually allowed.
These rules are not strict, but are motivated by the same concept as the guideline that says you should play on the hardest difficulty.
If the code gives you unfair advantage that makes the game easy, I don't think it should be allowed. If it makes the game harder, it's definitely allowed. If the effect is neutral, it's probably fine.
The way the author describes it makes it look very iffy in terms of legitimacy, and the effect of the code is clearly an unfair advantage that makes the game much easier. As opposed to:
#4224: amaurea, Cpadolf & total's SNES Super Metroid in 14:52.88 wrote:
The movie rules contain a rule against cheat codes, so if the rules are to be followed, this run would be rejected. However, we need to look at the spirit of the rule here. Normally, cheat codes are used to make gameplay easier - make it simpler to finish the game. However, in this case, the run is not ordinarily "finishing the game". It does not actually make "gameplay" easier, because what it actually affects here can barely be called "gameplay". In odd instances such as these, where the game is not being conventionally played or finished, we can make an exception to this rule.
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.
Howdy all. New here and I'm looking for an answer regarding timing of a game. I feel like I've been around the loop of all the newcomer docs a few times but am not finding my answer. I'm likely just getting lost in what feels like a sea of text.
I decided to learn to TAS and made a Castlevania Legends 100% TAS over the last few weeks. I shared it in the speedruns discord as I'm part of the community and was advised I should look to submit as it's almost 2 minutes faster than the current published TAS.
I've been advised timing would start on Power On but I've questioning when it would end. After the final attack there is a single text box to dismiss with a start press that leads to the rest of the end/credits. I wanted to include the input for submission based on what I saw in the guidelines but am not clear if that start press is the conclusion of time or it would be the final attack and the start press would simply be a courtesy to include in the movie.
Sorry I'm sure this question comes up often. Thanks in advance.
Joined: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2822
Location: Northern California
Oh. Uh... [quietly shoves her own recently started Castlevania Legends project under a nearby rug] Hi! Welcome to the site!
Here's the relevant section in the rules:
The movie must be complete:
It must be able to reach the credits or end screen without requiring any further interaction
So, yes, you'll want to extend the input to clear that textbox and reach the credits. The published run does this as well. There are occasionally exceptions to this, but as a general rule this is always the safest option for a TAS. Even then, it's not a big deal at all if your submissions ever get it wrong. The input file can be modified and replaced very easily, and it'd never affect the judgement of the submission.
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 Currently unable to dedicate a lot of time to the site, taking care of family.
Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
Haha sorry to disrupt your creativity. Indeed, I noticed the published run also did this.
My question is surrounding what the run time itself would be as a result. My gut says "time" is on the final attack and that should be what I base my math on & the extra input to advance the credits was a courtesy but I've gotten conflicting answers via the Discord. I wasn't sure if there was a clearly defined spot to check under the game itself, or to verify via the old TAS by SirVG. It's only a difference of about a second and half, but I just want to make sure I am accurate and know for future.
We don't manually time runs, run times are simply the length of the primary input file.
[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
OK cool. I was doing the math via frames for fun/posting the video. So in this case I'd look to include the final start press, truncate there as credits would roll normally after, & that would be my total. I think I got this. Much appreciated.
Hi, strizer86. I'm not a judge, so please take this with a grain of salt.
TAS timing and RTA timing are two very different things.
In RTA, timing starts at some arbitrary, community-agreed-upon point and ends at some arbitrary, community-agreed-upon point.
In TAS, timing is from power on of the console (frame 0) until the last registered input, whether that is to land the final attack, or to clear a textbox on the way to the credits. For almost every game on the website (with Rygar as an exception coming to mind), that is how the game is timed.
If you want to know precisely how long the previous TAS is, check its publication information, or double-check that by downloading the input file and appropriate emulator and seeing for yourself which frame the last input happens on.
I am still the wizard that did it.
"On my business card, I am a corporate president. In my mind, I am a game developer. But in my heart, I am a gamer." -- Satoru Iwata
<scrimpy> at least I now know where every map, energy and save room in this game is
