I myself noticed in a Zelda encode flickering that shouldn't be there. But that's the more noticeable sort of thing.
Link please
[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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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
Nach wrote:
I myself noticed in a Zelda encode flickering that shouldn't be there. But that's the more noticeable sort of thing.
Which Zelda encode are you specifically talking about?
Something which I saw years back.
There was flickering all over the place in the game which I never saw on my DMG.
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
The only DMG Zelda game I'm aware of is Link's Awakening
Correct.
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
so I'm guessing some random TAS on Youtube?
I saw this before there was a YouTube or TASs.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
[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
Can’t you tell us which one it is? It’s really hard to verify what you mean if no evidence is provided.
[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
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Memory wrote:
Link or it didn't happen.
No, no, Link is definitely there, but it clearly didn't happen.
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.
Something which I saw years back.
There was flickering all over the place in the game which I never saw on my DMG.
I saw this before there was a YouTube or TASs.
So you are blaming flickering on a really old recording on it (apparently) being on GBC mode instead of perhaps just inaccurate emulation? Or even just a really shitty recording? Considering this during a time when GB emulation in general was really poor? When emulators in general were just shit compared to today's? Hell it could of been some god damn compression artifact from someone turning up the compression to extremely high levels.
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Memory wrote:
Link or it didn't happen.
I find it amazing that I seem to be the only one that is aware of some DMG games not playing perfectly well on later Gameboy editions.
It's not like I collected every piece of information or video I ever came across to save it for just this moment. Especially for something which was common knowledge at the time among Gameboy fans.
I already linked you to Nintendo saying some games have issues, and a thread talking about a non-exhaustive list of issues various people there were discussing.
If you want to make believe none of these problems exist, because I cannot offhand show you every single individual issue in detail, then so be it, live in ignorance.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
So you are blaming flickering on a really old recording on it (apparently) being on GBC mode instead of perhaps just inaccurate emulation? Or even just a really shitty recording?
I'm telling you what I saw, I've blamed CGB mode because I didn't see the same issues on DX in CGB mode or the original in DMG mode in emulators I've tested. Maybe it was due to some emulation issue, but my first thought is otherwise because I'm not blind to CGBs having issues. I have quite an extensive collection of DMG games and played them with relatives and friends who also had large collections. When the CGB came out, my friends were telling me how they noticed this random issue or that random issue with different games. It's why I personally never bought a CGB myself. My DMG plays my games well, and I wasn't interested in a newer system which had the occasional issue.
CasualPokePlayer wrote:
Hell it could of been some god damn compression artifact from someone turning up the compression to extremely high levels.
Being that I work with video, I generally recognize compression artifacts when I see them.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Saying “you should just believe what I have to say” is not how you verify your claims.
[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
It's less a question of whether there are issues of DMG games not playing perfectly on future Gameboys, but whether there are issues in the cases you are concerned about
You've made nebulous statements about "some games" that other people have agreed with, but you have not provided any concrete evidence of any specific games having these issues.
You've stated that years ago you saw "flickering issues" with "a Zelda game", but without pointing to the video in question.
Nobody is denying that these issues exist, but again the question is whether issues exist in the games that have been published in not-original-GameBoy-mode.
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
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A very small number of older games may not function properly on the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, or Game Boy Advance SP. Common symptoms include scrambled images, missing graphics, or sound problems.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
A very small number of older games may not function properly on the Game Boy Color, Game Boy Advance, or Game Boy Advance SP. Common symptoms include scrambled images, missing graphics, or sound problems.
A very small number
Your source is literally saying they are edge cases.
Also Nintendo is really not the best source... considering how much bullshit they've said about how the Gameboy works, they are (somewhat ironically) not the best source to site for issues regarding the Gameboy.
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The problem is that these days there's very high demand for the GBC mode on GB games, and basically everyone involved in human speedrunning of this platform has been using GBC mode of some variation, because original GB is very hard to capture. If those people have discovered severe glitched, we could ask them.
On the other hand, if those glitches are severe indeed, we don't want to compromise the environment.
In such a situation, we can't blindly enforce either decision. If we want a future-proof policy that combines objective reality with subjective priorities, we have to be relying on reproducible facts, like examples of games not working properly in GBC, to see how severe it gets. I admit I haven't checked the links though.
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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Invariel wrote:
You've made nebulous statements about "some games" that other people have agreed with, but you have not provided any concrete evidence of any specific games having these issues.
I don't have a specific list of games that have issues. If I did I would share it.
I found a thread from a few years back which I linked earlier which mentions a few games with issues. There they talk about some major problems as well as more minor problems. There are specific games mentioned there as well as some specific problems.
Invariel wrote:
You've stated that years ago you saw "flickering issues" with "a Zelda game", but without pointing to the video in question.
If I still had the video, I would gladly share it. I can share my recollection of issues that I recall, but being ganged up like this, I'm really not inclined to mention anything because it'll just be followed up with oh, you must be some pathological liar, please prove every single point of every word you say.
Invariel wrote:
Nobody is denying that these issues exist, but again the question is whether issues exist in the games that have been published in not-original-GameBoy-mode.
It sounds an awful lot like people are denying that issues exist.
The thread I linked to has numerous people giving examples of such issues if you want some source other me.
My concern here is that there is no comprehensive definitive list of all the issues and to what extent they may affect game-play. Personally, I really don't care much if we publish a run that had one spot that looked a bit off, or it missed a bit of sound somewhere (games where the sound turns into static or constant buzzing is a different issue). What I do care about is it changing game-play in more subtle ways. Over the years people told me that some boss fights in a game felt different on a CGB than on a DMG, and it's these kinds of issues I'm concerned about. Potentially the amount of games affected in this fashion might be larger than games where there's more obvious problems with them. I don't know what you want me to show you here, and a video of some flickering or buzzing sounds is not going to magically prove it to you.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
It's not like we're stuck with vague guessing, there is a run on the workbench right now that I specifically mentioned is in GB mode because of annoying sprite errors in GBC mode.
Those stray lines and Dixie's messed up sprite are a result of GBC variations.
If you look here you can see the details of one sound hardware change that breaks a game in older model GBCs, look in obscure behaviour:
https://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles/Gameboy_sound_hardware
There are many variations in GBC from GB, and many variations amongst different models and from GBA, even just the fact that the GBC BIOS takes less time to run dramatically changes RNG in games that don't reset the timer (ex pokemon) all other things being equal.
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feos wrote:
The problem is that these days there's very high demand for the GBC mode on GB games, and basically everyone involved in human speedrunning of this platform has been using GBC mode of some variation, because original GB is very hard to capture.
Since when has TASVideos kowtowed to how some other site handled things? TASVideos has also never been about how easy or difficult it is to capture something.
The nature of most early devices are going to be hard to capture, unless you directly wire them up to something. It is possibly to modify the original Gameboy to do stuff with it, and there actually is a large community now around modifying Gameboys and adding on all sorts of new features to them or swapping out various components.
feos wrote:
On the other hand, if those glitches are severe indeed, we don't want to compromise the environment.
Our rules as they have been and are still today ensures we don't compromise the environment. You play the game on the system or systems it was originally designed for. This ensures that the game play and anything it encounters is legitimate (assuming no bug there in the emulator).
feos wrote:
I admit I haven't checked the links though.
I highly recommend reading the entirety of the three page thread I linked to.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Like feos, I haven't looked at your list either, so I don't know whether the games being called out in this thread are on that list or not. However, I am certain that you would have pointed to issues with these games if they were listed there.
As to the statement about boss fights feeling different on CGB than DMG, my initial skepticism asks, "Is that because you are more familiar with the fight now," but it's also possible that the fights are easier because they are different. The actual question I will raise is, "Does that matter in the context of a TAS?"
And, more broadly, if we assume that the emulation we use (mostly) accurately emulates the system the game is being played on, does it actually matter?
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
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Nach wrote:
Since when has TASVideos kowtowed to how some other site handled things? TASVideos has also never been about how easy or difficult it is to capture something.
The nature of most early devices are going to be hard to capture, unless you directly wire them up to something. It is possibly to modify the original Gameboy to do stuff with it, and there actually is a large community now around modifying Gameboys and adding on all sorts of new features to them or swapping out various components.
I'm not saying the demand is in the RTA community (CGB is already used there), the demand is right here at tasvideos, as you can see in this thread. I'm not saying we don't want to TAS GB because its hard to capture, I'm saying it's already common outside tasvideos because of that.
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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Invariel wrote:
Like feos, I haven't looked at your list either, so I don't know whether the games being called out in this thread are on that list or not. However, I am certain that you would have pointed to issues with these games if they were listed there.
I purposely did not mention anything specifically in this thread that is specifically in the other thread so as not to duplicate information. I highly recommend reading the other thread. Ideally it'd be nice if someone compiled a list of them.
Invariel wrote:
As to the statement about boss fights feeling different on CGB than DMG, my initial skepticism asks, "Is that because you are more familiar with the fight now," but it's also possible that the fights are easier because they are different.
I'm not skeptical about it because I know the platforms are different and there's even good well known reasons for the difference like Alyosha mentioned:
Alyosha wrote:
There are many variations in GBC from GB, and many variations amongst different models and from GBA, even just the fact that the GBC BIOS takes less time to run dramatically changes RNG in games that don't reset the timer (ex pokemon) all other things being equal.
Invariel wrote:
The actual question I will raise is, "Does that matter in the context of a TAS?"
It really depends what you consider important. If a boss uses different movement patterns on one generation of console versus another generation of console, do we care?
Invariel wrote:
And, more broadly, if we assume that the emulation we use (mostly) accurately emulates the system the game is being played on, does it actually matter?
That is indeed why I raised this issue. Do we care that the SGB, CGB, or AGB plays games designed for the earlier platform consistently in a different fashion? From a purist standpoint, I believe it does.
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feos wrote:
I'm not saying the demand is in the RTA community (CGB is already used there), the demand is right here at tasvideos, as you can see in this thread.
But is it a legitimate demand?
I see the demand mostly coming from people who are probably younger than a DMG, they probably never played these games on a DMG, they don't get how it subtly different.
feos wrote:
I'm not saying we don't want to TAS GB because its hard to capture, I'm saying it's already common outside tasvideos because of that.
Yet I don't see how that's a reasonable reason to use a platform the game was not originally designed for in our TASs. Unlike elsewhere, we place high stock on original legitimacy, at least we did till now. We know things aren't perfect, but haven't we always preferred playing things in the most accurate and legitimate fashion?
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
Nach wrote:
at least we did till now
So why is this an issue now and not 2 and a half years ago.
It's an issue regardless of when it started. The pages have the current rules, I don't know why judges just up and decided to ignore the rules.
I only noticed this now because I was searching our GB/SGB list for Mega Man games and this game vanished from it, and I was confused. If I would've noticed this earlier, I would've mentioned it earlier. I don't recall any of the judges coming to me saying they'd like to start breaking the rules here.
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Nach wrote:
I don't recall any of the judges coming to me saying they'd like to start breaking the rules here.
I'd like to start breaking the rules here.
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Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
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Nach wrote:
But is it a legitimate demand?
I see the demand mostly coming from people who are probably younger than a DMG, they probably never played these games on a DMG, they don't get how it subtly different.
It's coming from a variety of active contributors, and from having asked other staff members and people in chats, I haven't seen a single opinion against this demand. The age of our contributors is completely irrelevant to the discussion. The relevant part is that we agree to sacrifice accuracy, for example if it breaks determinism. Emulation is imperfect, so people just deal with subtle differences in some games.
Also, the obvious difference I'm noticing is we don't encode GB in shades of green. That's not authentic. Why is it encoded as shades of grey?
Nach wrote:
Yet I don't see how that's a reasonable reason to use a platform the game was not originally designed for in our TASs.
I explicitly said it's not the reason to avoid GB TASing, and you keep treating it like it's a reason I mentioned. It was an explanation why it's widespread in RTA.
Nach wrote:
Unlike elsewhere, we place high stock on original legitimacy, at least we did till now. We know things aren't perfect, but haven't we always preferred playing things in the most accurate and legitimate fashion?
Sure. Also, at the top of Judge Guidelines we say:
Satisfy the audience's expectations.
Which means we should be hearing people out, checking if they have a point, and whether it's possible to update our approach without causing any harm. It's the kind of balance we should be aiming for.
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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<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.
Those stray lines and Dixie's messed up sprite are a result of GBC variations.
If you look here you can see the details of one sound hardware change that breaks a game in older model GBCs, look in obscure behaviour:
https://gbdev.gg8.se/wiki/articles/Gameboy_sound_hardware
There are many variations in GBC from GB, and many variations amongst different models and from GBA, even just the fact that the GBC BIOS takes less time to run dramatically changes RNG in games that don't reset the timer (ex pokemon) all other things being equal.
