If the ending itself is just that long, it doesn't matter if you make the game jump to the beginning of that ending or to its end. What matters is when you trigger the ending itself, and actual gameplay is what happens before this ending, it's the thing that makes the ending happen. So we measure optimality of that, and movies end when it ends. If route 2 triggers the ending later, then it's less optimal in terms of Vault.
Gotcha! Thanks again feos and Samsara for clarifying this!
Sorry if I sound dumb here, apologies, but i recently got a updated gmv file but i cant upload, can someone please help me on this, thanks.
Edit:- nevermind I got the answer.
Hi me is Shamil Khan. I am TASer and creator (kindof).
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What happens when I submit a TAS and it doesn't appear in Submissions?
Where does it go?
This happened exactly when I submitted a Super Mario World NES TAS for beating World 1 as fast as possible.
EvaTheWingdale's TASes: When pushing the limits of a stupid game gets worked on, we work on it!
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EvaTheWingdale wrote:
What happens when I submit a TAS and it doesn't appear in Submissions?
Where does it go?
This happened exactly when I submitted a Super Mario World NES TAS for beating World 1 as fast as possible.
Looks like it was uploaded to userfiles, unless you actually mean you tried making a submission and it didn't work, in which case it would have told you what you did wrong.
I'd highly recommend not formally submitting this, by the way, as we do not accept incomplete movies. Keep it to userfiles until you finish the game (userfiles are not judged, so no need to worry about rejections), then make a formal submission once it's done.
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.
Hello,
I'm thinking about making a full completion TAS of Asterix: Search for Dogmatix but i'm unsure what criterias should I take to define it.
To remember : the game has 6 Worlds with :
- 3 levels containing 3 keys, money, and letters of the characters.
- 1 mini-game : unlocked by getting all letters of the World in the levels.
- 1 Boss unlocked by getting all 3 keys in levels.
- 1 tavern to buy HPs, password to "save" the progression.
When you get all letters of a World, a special sound is played to inform that the mini-game of the world is unlocked. By playing the mini-game : you'll only earn money (that will probably never be used).
So the options are :
- Only considering that getting all letters of the worlds is enough to consider full completion.
- same as above but while playing the mini-games as fast as possible (so "all levels" ?).
- Having thought about getting the maximum of money in a world but the problem is that letters respawn in levels after you get all of them so you can redo the mini-game as you please, otherwise coins are unique in levels.
- None of these options are acceptable and so full-completion for this game is not definable.
Thanks in advance for the reply.
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Unlocking all unlockables and playing through them (if they have speedrunnable gameplay) sounds like a solid goal IMO. If it's too complicated to describe with a label we can just call it "100%".
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.
Hello, this discussion started on Discord and I was recommended to move it here.
I am trying to make a base character base stats base equipment 100% TAS for Vagrant Story (PSX). I want to start fresh like how a new player would. However. there are multiple issues with that:
1) Around 1/3 of the game is accessible only in NG+
2) This NG+ exclusive content isn't situated in one location (e.g. bonus dungeon). Instead, you gain access to multiple locations scattered around the entire game. i.e. 14+ locked doors you encounter them all over the entire map.
3) There is no way to legitimacy finish the game without raising any of your stats because after you finish each boss an unskippable screen appears and one of your stats is raised randomly. This means around 30 bosses and around 30 times your stats are increased randomly.
Each one of these points is problematic and here is why:
1) TAS runs that go through the game twice contain a lot of repeated content and are boring to watch
2) You can't edit the video to include the extra content because your character in NG+ is vastly different from your character in NG. There are some unskippable gains that drastically change the experience and such jumps back and forth will negatively impact the quality of the run more than improve it.
3) These stat gains defeat the purpose of going through 100% of the game with base character/stats/equipment. I either do NG+ with OP character that insta-kills everything or a fresh character to simulate the experience of new players. My goal is to do the latter.
Now after looking at the Rules for Movies (http://tasvideos.org/MovieRules.html) it seems like exceptions were made for "save-anchored movies" and "Record from SRAM". I'm appealing to this exception because I'm proposing the following:
I illegitimately jump to the final boss and defeat it. This will allow me to get the key item needed for the NG+ exclusive content without altering my base character AT ALL or in any way. After accessing the NG+ save file, there will be no further interference of any kind. My goal is to bypass the in-game restriction and do an honest and fun run with lots of interesting strategies super unique to Vagrant Story that makes it an especially challenging/rewarding game to TAS.
If there are any questions or specifics you need to know before making up your mind, I'll be happy to answer. Here are some points below that came across the discussion on Discord:
1) Everything carries over to NG+ except consumables and key items.
2) Progress is reset to zero with every NG+. However, the game keeps track internally with your best progress across all NG+ (The game keeps track of various stuff because of the in-game achievements)
3) AFAIK there are no reproducible in-game glitches that allows me to get the endgame screen or skip all bosses.
Thank you very much!
I have a question regarding a potential 100% TAS of Star Wars Episode I: Racer:
When would the correct ending point of the movie be, according to the rules?
Let me explain the structure of the game, so you can understand the issue here. Defining 100% completion is not the problem: To unlock everything, you have to win every single race of the tournament mode. The tournament mode consists of three main circuits, Amateur, Semi-Pro and Galactic. On a new file, the first track of each of these circuits is available. The Galactic circuit displays the credits when completed, so it serves as the any% category of the game. Beating these three circuits will also unlock tracks on a fourth circuit, the Invitational circuit. This means that 100% completion can only be reached after the credits.
This is what happens when you win the last race:
- After crossing the finish line, you advance to the last character unlock cutscene with one input.
- The cutscene will play and fade into the last race result screen. With one more input, you return to the track selection, where it will now be visible that the last race has been won.
What the RTA community does is to skip the credits with a reset and end the run when winning the last race.
By the way, in case someone wanted to bring up vehicle upgrades as part of the 100% definition: The individual upgrades are not permanent, you can change them at any point. The only permanent aspect of the upgrades is which ones are available at Watto's shop. This depends on the number of completed races and is just achieved as a side effect of every 100% run.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
I have a question regarding a potential 100% TAS of Star Wars Episode I: Racer:
When would the correct ending point of the movie be, according to the rules?
Let me explain the structure of the game, so you can understand the issue here. Defining 100% completion is not the problem: To unlock everything, you have to win every single race of the tournament mode. The tournament mode consists of three main circuits, Amateur, Semi-Pro and Galactic. On a new file, the first track of each of these circuits is available. The Galactic circuit displays the credits when completed, so it serves as the any% category of the game. Beating these three circuits will also unlock tracks on a fourth circuit, the Invitational circuit. This means that 100% completion can only be reached after the credits.
This is what happens when you win the last race:
- After crossing the finish line, you advance to the last character unlock cutscene with one input.
- The cutscene will play and fade into the last race result screen. With one more input, you return to the track selection, where it will now be visible that the last race has been won.
What the RTA community does is to skip the credits with a reset and end the run when winning the last race.
By the way, in case someone wanted to bring up vehicle upgrades as part of the 100% definition: The individual upgrades are not permanent, you can change them at any point. The only permanent aspect of the upgrades is which ones are available at Watto's shop. This depends on the number of completed races and is just achieved as a side effect of every 100% run.
The F-Zero X TAS is not an optimal comparison, it would be like a Star Wars Racer TAS that only plays the Amateur Circuit. Such a movie could potentially even be publishable for Star Wars Racer, if it offered enough differences compared to 100%. If there was an F-Zero X TAS that did all of the tournaments and put the Joker cup - the one that displays the credits at the end - in the middle, that would be a similar situation.
Also, a big difference between the tournament modes of F-Zero X and Star Wars Racer ist that in the latter, you're free to unlock the tracks in any oder you like. You can start with the first race of Galactic and then switch over to complete a part of Semi-Pro. F-Zero X instead uses the traditional system of each cup being one linear event.
I don't know the other game at all, does it even have credits?
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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heysamesam wrote:
I illegitimately jump to the final boss and defeat it.
We don't allow that. If it's a verification movie before NG+, it's meant to show that you got to that point in a valid way without cheating. If you got there by cheating, then the entire NG+ run that goes next is spoiled by the impossibility of gameplay that it will contain.
Overall I'm still not sure what your primary goal is with your movie, because you want it to mix up several different concepts. It can't be full completion if it skips initial completion of the game (it's not full if there's only a half). And it can't be NG+ because it builds on an illegitimate foundation.
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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andypanther wrote:
The cutscene will play and fade into the last race result screen.
This sounds like the best option, because it's the last thing you can show after having completed everything, before going back to track selection again. Using a reset to skip the credits is fine because it makes your full completion movie optimal.
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.
So the TAS would end at the last result screen, seems like a reasonable ending point.
Thanks for making this clear for this game. When I read through the movie rules, I could not find anything about situations where a game has credits, but they are not the end of the run.
Current project: Gex 3 any%
Paused: Gex 64 any%
There are no N64 emulators. Just SM64 emulators with hacky support for all the other games.
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Posts: 2821
Location: Northern California
feos wrote:
Overall I'm still not sure what your primary goal is with your movie, because you want it to mix up several different concepts. It can't be full completion if it skips initial completion of the game (it's not full if there's only a half). And it can't be NG+ because it builds on an illegitimate foundation.
This is a special case.
1. Full completion for this game requires the game to be beaten beforehand, which unlocks content that can only be accessed in NG+ (a significant amount of content as well, it's basically a third of the overall game). The second playthrough would in fact be a full playthrough, but it would also be playing all of this extra content.
2. The idea with this movie would be that the first playthrough is skipped entirely, which is significant because it makes the character much weaker in the second playthrough, as everything from the original playthrough carries over into NG+, most notably things like equipment and stat gains from defeating bosses.
This is essentially the full game experience from a completely unintended fresh slate, making it much harder (as the new NG+ content is intended for NG+ characters and not fresh ones) and more impressive of a movie overall. I think we need to discuss things like this potentially being allowable and what we would need to change for that to happen. I feel like there's a place on the site for runs like these as long as we find a way to "verify" them, and I don't think it would necessary have to lead to a destructive precedent like "hey we allow cheats now" if we implement it correctly.
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Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
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The problem with cheats is arbitrariness. If cheats are needed for NG+ to look more like fresh completion, it proves that the game was never designed to work that way, and it doesn't have any oversights that could make it possible through glitching. Since there's infinite variation of possible cheats for any given game, we enter a whole different universe of play, and we're meant to be able to design rules for this chaotic infinity. We'd have to rely on something common because that's what makes a movie impressive. But I don't know about any common way of cheating in the speedrunning scene, where it would also make the outcome more impressive than without cheats.
I made cheated runs a part of my Demo tier proposal, but despite of havingdiscussed itfor adecade, we haven't ever agreed on the rules for such an ambiguous category.
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: 11/13/2006
Posts: 2821
Location: Northern California
Hear me out here: What if there didn't have to be a common, universal ruleset? We're never going to be able to come up with one, likely not even one that works for 50%, 25%, or even 10% of all games, so what if we just encouraged the authors to work with us directly on these kinds of submissions with a much more basic set of guidelines (if any at all) as opposed to one that tries to handle every submission by itself?
We can work with the author to:
1. Define the goal of their run and verify that it would be a good fit for the site
2. Define the minimum amount of cheating necessary for that goal
3. Design reproduction steps to make it work for everyone
In this case, the goal of the run is a single, complete game run including NG+ content from a fresh character state, which to me would fit the site really well as both a watchable 100% run and an interesting challenge run that tackles postgame content far, far earlier than intended. The minimum amount of cheating, in theory, would just be finding and setting an NG+ flag that allows this to happen, which shouldn't need more than a single cheat/RAM poke for reproduction. Of course, that may not actually be the case, but we would actively be working to figure it out.
I really think the only universal guideline should be "Get it approved in advance", and then we can figure things out from there case-by-case. At most, I would add "Cheats that benefit the player cannot be used", but even then I feel like that's something that might not work in some cases.
I'm starting to feel like our "rules must be universal" mindset is much more of a problem than a solution to problem, but that's a different and much deeper discussion for a later date.
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.
Would it be possible to judge the Vagrant Story case as a hard-mode rom-hack of sorts? That's basically the point of the idea as I understand it, and it might fit in some existing category seen that way, or at least the normal rules about difficulty choice would apply to it.
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Chanoyu wrote:
Would it be possible to judge the Vagrant Story case as a hard-mode rom-hack of sorts? That's basically the point of the idea as I understand it, and it might fit in some existing category seen that way, or at least the normal rules about difficulty choice would apply to it.
Hear me out here: What if there didn't have to be a common, universal ruleset? We're never going to be able to come up with one, likely not even one that works for 50%, 25%, or even 10% of all games, so what if we just encouraged the authors to work with us directly on these kinds of submissions with a much more basic set of guidelines (if any at all) as opposed to one that tries to handle every submission by itself?
The problem is not with inventing (or being unable to invent) universal rules. If we want our rules to look/feel/be legitimate, we want to come up with very, very specific rules that do not disappoint the staff and the audience. It took us 12 pages to add Vault. Since we're a community of people that try to go beyond human in a variety of directions, we have a lot of argument geeks that we should be able to convince.
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Any minor change to the site layout or mechanics will create great controversy, and a poll will be created to debate whether or not the change is a good idea. At least one user will threaten to quit over this change.
Samsara wrote:
We can work with the author to:
1. Define the goal of their run and verify that it would be a good fit for the site
2. Define the minimum amount of cheating necessary for that goal
3. Design reproduction steps to make it work for everyone
I really think the only universal guideline should be "Get it approved in advance", and then we can figure things out from there case-by-case. At most, I would add "Cheats that benefit the player cannot be used", but even then I feel like that's something that might not work in some cases.
I'm starting to feel like our "rules must be universal" mindset is much more of a problem than a solution to problem, but that's a different and much deeper discussion for a later date.
That almost sounds like relying on personal preferences of a judge team. Nothing wrong with that in an area that's designed to be subjective. And legitimacy is based on subjective feelings... it just requires approval from a very large group of people. Excitement sparks ideas, but to make it all actually happen we also need to put in hard mental work and be ready for it.
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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Samsara wrote:
EvaTheWingdale wrote:
What happens when I submit a TAS and it doesn't appear in Submissions?
Where does it go?
This happened exactly when I submitted a Super Mario World NES TAS for beating World 1 as fast as possible.
Looks like it was uploaded to userfiles, unless you actually mean you tried making a submission and it didn't work, in which case it would have told you what you did wrong.
I'd highly recommend not formally submitting this, by the way, as we do not accept incomplete movies. Keep it to userfiles until you finish the game (userfiles are not judged, so no need to worry about rejections), then make a formal submission once it's done.
I was doing a World 1 TAS of the game
EvaTheWingdale's TASes: When pushing the limits of a stupid game gets worked on, we work on it!
Let me first thank Samsara because he understands exactly what I am going for and it helps a lot of course that Samsara is familiar with the game. Additionally, I'm thankful for the sensibility feos is showing. I want you to know that I hear your concerns and it's my belief that this request aligns perfectly with the spirit of TAS: The thrill, challenge, problem solving, and optimization.
feos wrote:
It's theoretically possible to approach it as a hard mode NG+ hack, but I don't know if there will be an agreement about it.
What if I found the hex address of the Rood Inverse key item and toggled it on to access the restricted areas as an alternative method to the one suggested earlier? Would this be allowed as a hard mode NG+ exception since the restricted areas feature stronger enemies, mightier bosses and the game's superboss?
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feos wrote:
The problem is not with inventing (or being unable to invent) universal rules. If we want our rules to look/feel/be legitimate, we want to come up with very, very specific rules that do not disappoint the staff and the audience.
That is literally the problem. They don't need to be specific. Making them overly specific does nothing but introduce increasingly arbitrary restrictions that we end up gradually whittling down anyway once we realize that they contradict our other sets of overly specific rules. If all of our rules end up being very, very specific, then is there really any reason to have Judges at all apart from having us there to clarify those rules? The approach we take to submissions doesn't have to be strictly pragmatic and nothing else, we can be allowed some idealism here and there.
It took us 12 pages to add Vault. Since we're a community of people that try to go beyond human in a variety of directions, we have a lot of argument geeks that we should be able to convince.
We need to try to appeal to the TAS community at large instead of trying to refine things to specifically fit the people that are already here. 12 pages of people arguing about Vault ended up with a system that still needs to be refined almost 10 years later, because it started off too specific for a tier that was inherently meant to be broad. This isn't saying "don't listen to our community", of course, just that we shouldn't be EXCLUSIVELY listening to them when it ends up unintentionally ostracizing potential new members.
...But, again, this is a deeper conversation than "what do we do about this Vagrant Story TAS". We'd probably need to hash something like this out as a team privately before taking it public.
That almost sounds like relying on personal preferences of a judge team. Nothing wrong with that in an area that's designed to be subjective. And legitimacy is based on subjective feelings... it just requires approval from a very large group of people. Excitement sparks ideas, but to make it all actually happen we also need to put in hard mental work and be ready for it.
I'm absolutely willing to put in the work, but I'm just one incredibly attractive woman in the grand scheme of things and I don't feel like I have the pull required to handle everything on my own. We not only have to put in the work, we have to show that we're willing to do so, both as a team and individually, so we're not stuck in the usual situation where we have a solution in sight but nobody brings it up because we all feel like everyone else is past the discussion.
heysamesam wrote:
Let me first thank Samsara because she understands exactly what I am going for and it helps a lot of course that Samsara is familiar with the game. Additionally, I'm thankful for the sensibility feos is showing. I want you to know that I hear your concerns and it's my belief that this request aligns perfectly with the spirit of TAS: The thrill, challenge, problem solving, and optimization.
What if I found the hex address of the Rood Inverse key item and toggled it on to access the restricted areas as an alternative method to the one suggested earlier? Would this be allowed as a hard mode NG+ exception since the restricted areas feature stronger enemies, mightier bosses and the game's superboss?
This is the solution I was thinking of, actually. It sounds possible in theory and only requires a single change to the game for the desired result. Heck, for the true ROM hack experience, it could probably be hacked into the game itself without much effort so it wouldn't require a cheat at all. There's some info on DataCrystal for Vagrant Story, at least, so that'd be a good place to start.Also, I'm a woman, sorry for the correction c:
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Now infrequently posting on BlueskywarmCabin wrote:
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Samsara wrote:
That is literally the problem. They don't need to be specific. Making them overly specific does nothing but introduce increasingly arbitrary restrictions that we end up gradually whittling down anyway once we realize that they contradict our other sets of overly specific rules. If all of our rules end up being very, very specific, then is there really any reason to have Judges at all apart from having us there to clarify those rules? The approach we take to submissions doesn't have to be strictly pragmatic and nothing else, we can be allowed some idealism here and there.
We need to try to appeal to the TAS community at large instead of trying to refine things to specifically fit the people that are already here. 12 pages of people arguing about Vault ended up with a system that still needs to be refined almost 10 years later, because it started off too specific for a tier that was inherently meant to be broad. This isn't saying "don't listen to our community", of course, just that we shouldn't be EXCLUSIVELY listening to them when it ends up unintentionally ostracizing potential new members.
I didn't say sophisticated or complex. They can be idealistic and abstract. But when we define them, we still need to appeal to the crowd that's already there, and if we want, to the people whom we hope to attract in the future. The main point of any rules we make is that they should not disappoint the audience (current and potential). So we will need to be very careful with the goals we set and with how we word things. That's where the rules need to be specific: in how well they grasp where we want to be as a community.
Samsara wrote:
This is the solution I was thinking of, actually. It sounds possible in theory and only requires a single change to the game for the desired result. Heck, for the true ROM hack experience, it could probably be hacked into the game itself without much effort so it wouldn't require a cheat at all. There's some info on DataCrystal for Vagrant Story, at least, so that'd be a good place to start.
If we define this ROM hack as a pure hard mode, made harder by discarding all the NG+ advantages while also unlocking all its challenges, that sounds like a worthy approach. So if someone makes a list of things we block to make our lives harder (gameplay wise), and things we unlock to make our lives even harder, with that patch, it'd be very helpful.
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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Posts: 2821
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feos wrote:
I didn't say sophisticated or complex. They can be idealistic and abstract. But when we define them, we still need to appeal to the crowd that's already there, and if we want, to the people whom we hope to attract in the future. The main point of any rules we make is that they should not disappoint the audience (current and potential). So we will need to be very careful with the goals we set and with how we word things. That's where the rules need to be specific: in how well they grasp where we want to be as a community.
Then I feel we should start prioritizing potential over current, though the level of change I think would be right to support that prioritization would be pretty drastic to do all at once. I'll have to find some time and focus to put all of my thoughts in order about this.
If we define this ROM hack as a pure hard mode, made harder by discarding all the NG+ advantages while also unlocking all its challenges, that sounds like a worthy approach. So if someone makes a list of things we block to make our lives harder (gameplay wise), and things we unlock to make our lives even harder, with that patch, it'd be very helpful.
samesam can explain all of this better, but as far as I'm aware, pretty much everything obtained and collected in NG carries over to NG+, so normally you would have endgame stats, endgame equipment, endgame items, things that would completely trivialize the bulk of the NG+ playthrough. In most games, this wouldn't be too much of an issue, as you could in theory minimize what gets collected on the verification movie and start NG+ with somewhat of a clean slate, but the thing about Vagrant Story is that you get mandatory stat gains upon defeating bosses, regardless of anything else you do:
heysamesam wrote:
There is no way to legitimacy finish the game without raising any of your stats because after you finish each boss an unskippable screen appears and one of your stats is raised randomly. This means around 30 bosses and around 30 times your stats are increased randomly.
So in effect, even a completely minimized verification file would still be much stronger than a completely fresh character.
As for the extra content, there's a set of locked doors throughout the game that account for about a third of the game's total content, doors that can only be opened on an NG+ file. These doors contain content appropriately leveled for NG+ characters, including these 30 free stat bonuses. This means that a fresh character would have a nightmare of a time trying to complete this content, as they wouldn't have the equipment and stats that this content was balanced around. Thus, we reach plenty of situations where the player has to overcome insurmountable odds all throughout the run.
Essentially, the proposed method allows for a single run of the game with 100% completion using a much weaker than intended character, which to me offers both the most complete and the most entertaining experience for a TAS of this game.
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What would be the potential duration of a movie that gets 100% starting from initial game start as it's designed? And of NG+ hack?
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.
