Oh you are right. Also I wanted to ask something in the long term. I'm not sure the motivational force coming from increased emulation accuracy might be enough for resyncers.
For example I would personally enjoy resyncing as I can learn from the TAS and TASer while doing it. I'm unsure about why would someone resort to resyncing instead of TASing.
I can't really express my potential fear of someone misusing this system who would try to resync very old movies which probably gets new windows of possibilities which the previous TASer didn't had as the emulator wasn't published at the time.
Just want to be sure the rules gets ironed out before officially supporting it. edit: it gets official support
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
There is no real misuse possible with this because a TAS that is merely resynced without any sufficient evidence that no further improvements to it are possible will retain only the original author's credit, and everyone else will also benefit from a more accurate representation of the game in the TAS. Even when there is evidence that no further improvement is possible, the resync has to solve noticeable issues coming from emulation inaccuracy, and the original author will still keep their credit in any case. The original author is never harmed by this, and the audience wins every time.
Some examples of what can motivate people to resync TASes without remaking them would be console verification (when they're doing the verification themselves; this has actually happened multiple times) and TASers working on emulator improvements (Alyosha has been brought up before); in other words, situations where it's a byproduct of a greater goal.
Of course, people aren't going to be lining up to do this; it's still only going to happen once in a while. I'm just not okay with rules explicitly prohibiting useful contributions when there's really no harm in them.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I don't understand this sentence (the part after the dash). We don't expect emulation accuracy to get worse over time, so we don't explicitly invalidate gains new movies get from worse accuracy. Implicitly we do ignore such differences, but why does it affect priority of resyncs?
We don't disallow other people from resyncing movies to work on console. There's no explicit rule for resyncs, even though this thread was made so we could have one. The situation of console resync being added only happened once, and we can still tweak it as we need.
Mothrayas and adelikat disagree with changing authorship here (even to co-authorship). Nach isn't posting in these threads, but I can conclude that since he doesn't want non-gameplay improvements to be accepted, he also disagrees with authorship being changed upon resync.
Otherwise, I like the precedent of #1411: Phil & Genisto's NES Circus Charlie in 03:22.68, and majority seems to agree that submitting a resync is acceptable as a new publication, if conditions are met.
I like this.
I like this.
How do we verify this?
I like this.
I HATE this. We do not, ever, unpublish movies. We do not erase them from the database. If it was created, accepted, and published, it is a valid verified record. We are an archive of records among other things. We want to be persistent and reliable. And the work that was invested in it should not be undone. I'm scared to even think of other potential "reasons" to erase a movie from the site. The only reason this should ever happen is accidentally using an entirely wrong movie or having a movie containing illegal data in it somehow. Erasing it doesn't only say it's bad to have it on the site (we backwards-obsolete impossible movies that were proven to have relied on emulator bugs), it says it's dangerous to still host it! There's no reason to act like the pre-resync movies are that bad.
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 good notes and answers from both of you!
Well yes, looks like the only authorship is my concern for "potential fear":
An old TAS needs resync. Author is called A. Resyncer called R. R has access to a new emulator which A didn't had during the time of submission/judgement.
1. Will A gets notified before R attempts to resyncing it?
2. Will A retain his player points after R submits it and it gets accepted?
3. Will R gain player points after he submits it?
My personal opinion would be Yes, Yes, No, but it obviously depends on other things like how hard was it to resync. I think R should gain player points (which is currently calculated from the number of authors and the votes given by the community who watched and voted for this movie) without impairing A's (increasing player points to show his experience and work done with TASes).
edit: a 4th question would be: Will A gain player points after R submits it, which in my opinion he probably should, I mean Yes.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I have a whole bunch of reasons laid out on why resync should not compete with initial TASing. Authorship matters can be deduced from that as well.
If you create a TAS alone, you are its sole author.
If you improve a part of an existing TAS, and take the rest of the movie, you are a co-author.
If you reTAS from scratch and beat someone else's movie, you're a new sole author.
If you do not improve gameplay, you're not an author of a TAS.
Nothing prevents you from finding a real improvement if there is. If you know the game well enough, you very well may find it.
There's no way to measure effort that had to be invested into a resync. So there's no way to distinguish between low-effort resync spam just to gain points and painstaking work that involved a ton of research and trial-and-error. So there's no way to distinguish between cases when common sense says it's fair to become a co-author and cases when it's obviously an abuse. So if actual superplay is not improved, it's better to retain the unambiguous borderline we've always had.
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.
Replying to feos:
So this means the answers to my questions would be No (there is no notification system for TASVideos' players), No(the movie file will be replaced and it will be reencoded, but not rejudged, retaining his original player points while new votes might come) (the original player going to lose player points because the formula's O is going to be 10^-6 instead of 1), No (player points not awarded for resyncers), Yes (thanks to the previous 2 question + answer), right?
I guess this is OK. Will definitely want to revisit this thread once the rules ironed out.
I'm unsure about why is it required to submit it as a new publication. Did I misread Mothrayas and adelikat's opinion regarding this (as they were not directly answered to this) on this particular Phil and Genisto scenario? Or you just simply have a different opinion?
edit: I was about to edit the probable answers to add Phil and Genisto example (which was using the "community liked it" as a reason for officially supporting this kind of resyncing) while feos already posted it. So I changed the answer for 2nd to Yes and last one to No. I would be glad if you next time just answer my questions instead of showing another scenarios.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and 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.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
I don't know a complete answer until we come to an agreement. My personal opinion is this:
Resyncing should only be done if an old movie had audible or visible emulation errors and a resync fixes them, or the old run didn't sync on console and the new one does. When none of those issues remain anymore, new resyncs will be rejected.
A new run should sync on a versioned release of a currently approved emulator.
No known improvements are there to implement.
A resync is a new submission, and it obsoletes the previous run, but previous authors remain as if it was them who created the resync. Resyncer gets no points and no authorship. To get authorship and points, make an actual improvement.
Notifying the previous authors is not required.
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.
Ambassador, Moderator, Site Developer, Player
(155)
Joined: 3/17/2018
Posts: 358
Location: Holland, MI
I 100% agree on authorship but I think it would be good to have resyncs that get console verified to have a point reward unless we don't see a reason to incentivize that.
I don't like this approach. My current opinion according to feos' version is a strong No as this system would not support the original TAS and it's TASers.
What I see is that it's similar to the First 500 project, trying to reTAS old TASes on a new emulator and hoping it will be resyncable at least. If it's improvable, the resyncer becomes an author and he can simply (as long as the judge makes enough investigation to allow this considering the margin of improvement) drop out the other authors.
Note that if these would be my TASes, I'm perfectly fine with dropping me as an author since I don't care about authorship. What I care is that encouraging officially this kind of behaviour (go and try resync TASes! improved? go get your player points! not improved? well, no player points but thanks for the resync, bye.)
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Joined: 12/28/2013
Posts: 396
Location: Rio de Janeiro, Brasil
I'm not sure if I understand what you mean, but if the second paragraph is meant to explain the first it's unclear how it makes sense. What you described is already the status quo: anyone can pick an old movie to try to improve it, potentially 'dropping out the other authors'. What do you see in the official resyncs system that somehow aggravates the problem of "not supporting the original TASers"?
The 2nd paragraph of my post shows a similar situation where the community members try to TAS old movies that probably will have improvements and will be allowed to submit it and everything goes as used to go.
The 3rd paragraph of my post shows this officially supported system where the community members try to TAS old movies that might have improvements and they might be allowed to submit it and it will require investigation from the judge's part about is there actually an improvement made to reward the resyncer player points (in this case the resyncer becomes the author) or not (where the resyncer's TAS will be the world record but he won't gain player points nor any indicator on having experience in this).
edit: regarding "not supporting the original TASers", it is my interpretation of adelikat's and Mothrayas' opinion from 1st or 2nd page. They might be thinking something entirely else but this is what I've understood so far.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Was that a reply to my latest post or to TiKevin83?
Authorship is the only way to get player points so I dunno.
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.
To you feos.
Currently. I guess there could be made a change to give points to the resyncer if that would be the requested feature.
edit: or adding a new user rank Resyncer.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
Then I don't understand how that system does not support original TAS and its authors. Original authors remain the same. Isn't that support?
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.
Not of resyncs per se; the way we treat emulation differences has made me think—perhaps mistakenly—that even if, say, there were two movies submitted independently and at the same time, with no discernible difference in gameplay, the movie made on a more accurate emulator would be preferred even if slower due to extra loading lag and such. If this is a correct impression then there is also no reason not to give priority to a more accurate movie if it is available.
What we explicitly disallow (EDIT: I guess the better word would be discourage) right now is submitting such movies, but what I mean more specifically is having an updated movie be the base of a publication regardless of the procedure through which it was offered. There are some published movies resynced for console verification that have no gameplay improvements in the resyncs themselves but none of them are anything more than a sidenote on an existing publication at best.
Both the way the rule is worded right now and the way publications of runs later resynced to console are presented makes it look like we don't really want this kind of contribution and only reluctantly acknowledge it. I'm not saying that's how we treat it in reality—but that is how we project it outwardly via our documented policies and behavior. In this respect I also want the rules to read in a more welcoming way even if they don't exactly lead to a significant difference in operation. (Same motivation as removing references to words like "proper" or "serious".)
That's actually not what they're disagreeing with.
If you reread my initial post, I'm describing two different situations there: one where a movie is resynced without an attempt at improvement (in which case no change in authorship occurs at all) (1), and one where an improvement is attempted but sufficiently proven to be unattainable (2).
TiKevin83's submission is situation #1 for which no change of authorship is being discussed at all. Mothrayas and adelikat did not and could not disagree with co-authorship under the conditions outlined for situation #2 because that wasn't even set up for discussion at the time. What was being discussed was closer to situation #1.
What Moth explicitly disagreed with and dedicated an entire paragraph of his post is removal of the original authorship credit, which is not at all what I'm suggesting at any point, and would never do.
On a case-by-case basis in a similar way as we handle other uncertain situations: by relying on the author's research and judge's discretion. Basically, what a judge would be trying to determine in this case is whether the new author's research offers a deep enough insight into the game that it proves they would've found an improvement if they were any, and hence warrant a joint credit for the work they've done. If it only relies on already-existing research, it would simply be treated as a regular resync; i.e. rejected and used to update an existing publication with a mention in the publication text and such if other conditions discussed earlier are met.
In other words, in this situation the new author already needs to demonstrate effort worthy of full credit to earn just the joint credit. Think about it from their perspective, too: when they set out to improve a run that falls under the situation we're discussing they don't know beforehand that they won't be able to find an improvement, yet they still put in all the work that would be necessary to find one. It's not their fault if there is nothing left to improve. But their effort still does contribute something meaningful despite that, so in my opinion a co-authorship is warranted in such case.
Okay, that argument itself is entirely fair, but I think it's somewhat misguided. The way I see it, we're already doing a thing that is very similar with the way we replace submission files when an improvement is made in the time window between submission and publication. As far as I'm aware, those do, in fact, get erased—or at least they aren't available in any way a regular user (or even one with slightly elevated privileges like myself) can access. I think we need some kind of consistency between this, because a resync to fix emulation issues without affecting anything else is, to me, no different from trimming unnecessary input at the end or something else like that: a minor fix not affecting the movie as a whole or its creative choices in particular.
I think it's entirely fair to have everything available in history as long as the superior version is the one the publication is based on. I'd love to hear more opinions on this from movie authors as well, but I think it's a very reasonable take.
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
It's a correct impression.
When console verification became a thing, we invented a way to give it recognition. When state of art has advanced, we invented another way to reflect that too. Now we're about to invent yet another. It's not fair to read the current policy as discouraging resyncs.
If there's no clearly measurable improvement, there's no way to verify research alone in order to distinguish good faith from abuse. In some games you have dozens of experts, and each of them can actually try and check some improvement ideas and explain in great details why it didn't work. There's no sensible limit to this. Just imagine everyone who understands SM64 starts claiming co-authorship to every SM64 movie where that potential improvement could have worked. Now, if they aren't 100% honest, SM64 TASing is insane enough to make some made-up story believable (I'd get lost once parallel universes are brought up). Then you'd need a judge who has TASed that game and can prove that it's BS (entirely, or just 10% of the story) or you need to talk to other SM64 TASers and ask them to disprove the BS.
If the original TASer has used someone's extensive research and relied on it, and that made the new improvements possible, we don't have anything against that researcher being added to co-authors if the main author feels it's due. But if the original author doesn't agree that new research is worth expanding authorship post-factum, without gameplay improvements, I don't think it's fair to force them to accept that fact and deal with it.
moozooh wrote:
Okay, that argument itself is entirely fair, but I think it's somewhat misguided. The way I see it, we're already doing a thing that is very similar with the way we replace submission files when an improvement is made in the time window between submission and publication. As far as I'm aware, those do, in fact, get erased—or at least they aren't available in any way a regular user (or even one with slightly elevated privileges like myself) can access. I think we need some kind of consistency between this, because a resync to fix emulation issues without affecting anything else is, to me, no different from trimming unnecessary input at the end or something else like that: a minor fix not affecting the movie as a whole or its creative choices in particular.
I think it's entirely fair to have everything available in history as long as the superior version is the one the publication is based on. I'd love to hear more opinions on this from movie authors as well, but I think it's a very reasonable take.
With submissions, the old file gets invalidated because we don't have to do anything with it, we just make sure the new one actually plays properly. Then all the workflow is applied to the new file, and it gets published if it's good.
Among all else, publication is a way to notify everyone that a new movie is there and it's worth checking out. If you don't make a new publication out of a resync, people don't know it has been changed, aside from those subscribed to TASVideosChannel on youtube, and probably some people who were in chats when it happened.
I still don't see any harm in making resyncs new publications that would justify rewriting published record history (which feels like erasing political opponents from photographs).
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.
There's something I am wondering about the "syncs to console" part of this idea. How does this work wrt GB/C? GB/C TASes are currently only syncable to console if you go resync them with a GBA platform*.
This is mainly problematic due to this part of the rules regarding platform choice for GB/C TASes:
The default options that appear when starting a recording should often reflect the device the game was specifically released for, and newer device modes may cause glitches, so think twice before changing them.
If glitches that are caused by a newer mode are obvious to unassisted eye/ear in normal viewing conditions, or hinder gameplay, that mode is not allowed.
This part of the rules if I recall correctly was meant as for certain problematic games, a console verification would have to be resynced to GBA mode while the publication would have to use GB mode, and GBA mode would not be able to be published. I do wonder how this ends up working out with this idea.
*(Ok technically SGB TASes have been able to be verified but even then your "good" choices are either lsnes (not a very good choice in the first place but way better than BizHawk BSNES) or the BSNESv115+ BizHawk core (actually the most accurate SGB rerecording emulator at this point), and even then some resyncs might be practically impossible since the SGB filters out L+R/U+D and some inputs are not going to be possible due to frame timing going off SNES VBlank)
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
It the new movie makes it sync on console but introduces problems on its own (audio/visual/gameplay) then that defeats the point of resyncing on a more accurate emulator. Because the console version can make it appear less accurate to how it was meant to work.
Not sure if we still mark those as console verified, but making a submission that introduces problems that didn't exist before, doesn't advance the state of art IMO.
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.
Mothrayas and adelikat disagree with changing authorship here (even to co-authorship).
That's actually not what they're disagreeing with.
(edit: have no idea how to write double quotes)Edit by feos: you need to put names in quotes
It's really hard to make useful contributions or simply debate this ordeal with the absence of those who will probably write and maintain this system.
In other words, can we make a thread with votings regarding the current (if there's any) proposal of this, so I don't need to figure out who said what regarding each aspects and potential usage and misusage of the rules?
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
moozooh and Moth talked about this in the chat. Moth's stance is still "authorship should not change upon resync". I can ask adelikat again if you want.
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 want to contribute in a helpful way. I'm interested in what the community thinks of the proposed system (in a simple way of checking how many Yes, No, or other) and their reasonings if there's any.
Mothrayas and adelikat only mentioned as an example as they already cast some vote despite it was 2013~2018 and I guess they were not presented with a prototype of rules and the routines to be used for the different scenarios. But yes, the head of the site and the main judge might be enough for internal discussion, but as a community, I would also like to listen to them edit: the users of the community.
As I used to say... since I'm in the extreme minority who opposes this currently, and I'm just a user, it's not required to fulfill my wish of bothering them to write elaborated thoughts about their decision of supporting this or not.
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11495
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
There's no perfect agreement yet on what we'll be proposing. Once we decide that, we'll announce that proposal and ask for more opinions, but from reading the thread most of the stances are already visible. I don't know if we will get any more useful data if this becomes a poll. Because Yes/No is not as useful as brainstorming together.
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.
Bumping this thread as I am currently working on NESnake 2. This run is essentially all luck manipulation, but must be done from scratch to work on console. The end result will be the same length but with entirely different inputs. I have console verified the first level:
EDIT: new run made, video removed
I think a finished run should obsolete the current one, even if the same length.
Even if I wouldn't be the author of that TAS I would say yes, the more technically correct TAS should supersede the previous TAS.
The luck manipulation based on pressing any buttons at specific frames, so the new TAS could be made with exactly the same strategy (the position of numbers).
PhD in TASing 🎓 speedrun enthusiast ❤🚷🔥 white hat hacker ▓ black box tester ░ censorships and rules...