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If you can pick difficulty directly, rather than via a password or a save file of prior completion, it counts as an in-game difficulty mode and is fine for Standard.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
If you can pick difficulty directly, rather than via a password or a save file of prior completion, it counts as an in-game difficulty mode and is fine for Standard.
Thanks.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence.
----
SOYZA: Are you playing a game?
NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing.
SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real?
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Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes?
Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :)
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BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
In there, feos wrote that a 2P full completion can theoretically be obsoleted by 1P full completion, so I'd like to know what would be the logic behind such possibility, and if there should be made a clear rule that regulates it.
In my opinion, since the current policy for fastest-completion is to keep separate branches for the different amount of players (like for Contra), then it should be also done for full-completion, for a simple matter of consistency. Or is there any reason to apply a different policy?
However, after finding this precedent, I'm not sure anymore about what's the intended policy. Due to the recent changes to the tier system, I think this would be a perfect timing for introducing a rule that clearly states if and when different amount of players should be acceptable as a separate branch.
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Doing something about player counts and eligibility for Standard is a future plan. We add one Standard goal at a time, so we'll get to it eventually. Right now there's no policy on keeping player counts separated. It just happens to meet Moons requirements sometimes, so we decide to have both. I'll look into your example later.
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've been working on an Any% No Major Glitches Hollow Knight TAS. It's pretty close to done. However, due to the fact that its on the Unity Engine, along with some other reasons, it might be hard to submit.
1) We have to run on our own branch of libTAS, for consistent-ish loads.
2) Desyncs are very common, theres numerous unknown reasons for this, but for now, the movie rarely runs to completion without the use of savestates
3) It requires a specific downpatched version of the game (which is optimal for the category), and also requires the same files in the registry to match
I'm wondering if this could still be submittable?
I've been working on an Any% No Major Glitches Hollow Knight TAS. It's pretty close to done. However, due to the fact that its on the Unity Engine, along with some other reasons, it might be hard to submit.
1) We have to run on our own branch of libTAS, for consistent-ish loads.
2) Desyncs are very common, theres numerous unknown reasons for this, but for now, the movie rarely runs to completion without the use of savestates
3) It requires a specific downpatched version of the game (which is optimal for the category), and also requires the same files in the registry to match
I'm wondering if this could still be submittable?
1. We need the run to sync on an official release. If this branch can get its changes merged into master and a release comes, that could potentially be used.
2. Rarely? As in it sometimes can? If so, you might have a shot, if we can get it to sync on our side without states, we can accept it.
3. As long as you properly document the steps needed to obtain this version and the needed settings and such in the submission this shouldn't be an issue.
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1) Consistent-ish loads sounds like something upstream would want indeed?
2) Creating savestates during movie replay and loading them is fine, though it may make encoding the run non-trivial.
3) If it's still an official (older) version of the game it's also fine. What kind of files in the registry 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.
I'm still working out exactly what will and won't cause desyncs with registry, although afaik it should just be setting resolution and brightness and scale, as opening the game urself before to do it writes to the registry which can cause a desync. (the only concern is technically scale and brightness will pop up again on first file select, but for syncing reasons this has been edited in manually before loading the game)
It seems like a full encode only takes a few savestates, its usually certain rooms that desync. I'm also testing if the Steam beta for this patch provided by Team Cherry works.
As for the official release, it was made by Kilaye, so i'll talk to them about merging it onto main if its required for rulesets.
lastly the tas was designed with loadless timer in mind, which can be displayed with a modded api on the encode (inputs still sync to vanilla api) this leads to a few strats that are based on the loadless timer, so i'd understand if this wouldn't be submittable to Standard
mostly i was asking to see if it was even reasonable to look into submitting, it seems like it is, so i'll get some more solid answers since i've finished the tas
(a note on the desyncs though, it tends to be due to a floating rounding error or some thing, so for some desyncs you just have to completely restart, even when using savestates)
1) Consistent-ish loads sounds like something upstream would want indeed?
The changes made are specific to Unity engine, and are the following:
* Specific threads are identified as coming from the Unity thread pool that does async stuff (used by Unity's coroutines). The main thread is paused as long as one of those threads are still processing. One of the current problem is that libtas cannot identify those threads easily, because Unity is in C#, so code is JIT and internals are inaccessible. The solution I found to detect those threads is comparing their identifier (defined as pointer-to-thread-routine - pointer-to-caller) to a known list of identifiers (those are constant across instances and computer, but change for each version of the Unity engine used). This is very hacky, but addressed the issue.
That's how it looks like in libtas code:
* Sleep calls with a specific value of 2000 us are discarded as they occur on some situations when main thread is waiting for another thread.
I could merge those into libtas main branch, but they would still look hacky unless I could figure out how to better get into Unity's internals.
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Yes, to me it still looks like a much much better option than having to deal with manual pausing (lua can improve that but still). It'd only need to be a dedicated option disabled by default. Also replacing magic numbers with comprehensible constants will make it a bit less hacky :D
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.
The way the game that I am TASing(Cameltry for SNES) works is that you have to beat a set of courses, then it gives you a password(which is the same every time) to go to the next set, and only the final set of courses is necessary for the credits to be shown. I am running all levels, but it is possible to exit a course early and there is still internal data indicating all the levels of the course as being completed, but it doesn't save the progress toward getting the next password. Is it necessary to get the game to a state in which it will give me the password, and if so, is it necessary to have the password be shown on screen?
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GarbiTheGlitcheress wrote:
The way the game that I am TASing(Cameltry for SNES) works is that you have to beat a set of courses, then it gives you a password(which is the same every time) to go to the next set, and only the final set of courses is necessary for the credits to be shown. I am running all levels, but it is possible to exit a course early and there is still internal data indicating all the levels of the course as being completed, but it doesn't save the progress toward getting the next password. Is it necessary to get the game to a state in which it will give me the password, and if so, is it necessary to have the password be shown on screen?
Showing the password is not necessary, because we don't rely on password visibility in our rules. If you need to actually use some password, and there's a good reason for that, you're considered an omniscient being who just knows all the in-game info in advance and uses it for optimization. But if the password gives unfair advantage, showing it on the screen doesn't prevent it from making the game easier, so it's generally not allowed to use it. If you don't use it at all, showing it is also not needed.
If the game records your completion across soft resets or something, they're still allowed: [1901] NES Rockin' Kats by FatRatKnight, Tompa, pirate_sephiroth & MESHUGGAH in 16:33.71. So existing the course is also allowed, unless it contradicts your primary goal. Some people might argue that exiting levels early does contradict the goal of completing all levels.
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.
Awesome, thanks for the clarification :)
feos wrote:
If the game records your completion across soft resets or something, they're still allowed: [1901] NES Rockin' Kats by FatRatKnight, Tompa, pirate_sephiroth & MESHUGGAH in 16:33.71. So existing the course is also allowed, unless it contradicts your primary goal. Some people might argue that exiting levels early does contradict the goal of completing all levels.
There is a hidden code that lets you view all of the times for the levels, and my goal is to have times for all of the levels displayed if you use the code after the movie is finished, which only happens if you do all of the level, so I am counting that as completion.
Let's talk Pikmin 2:
Region
I am making an "All Treasures" TAS (based on the RTA category). Due to significant regional differences particularly with treasure values and weights, the JP version is overall the fastest category. However, the complexity of the carrying speed formula and random cave generation make it near impossible to pinpoint the exact timesave of one version over another. How exactly would this be handled?
Optimization
The main appeal of TASing this game for me is in the planning/routing. However, my actual gameplay, although faster than any RTA player, often leaves room for improvement, as has been shown by another TASer who focuses more on challenge mode. Would a completed run still be acceptable if a few seconds here and there could be saved with many more hours of fine optimizations?
Dolphin Version
I am still planning on using Dolphin Lua Core for the run, despite upcoming TAS improvements to mainline Dolphin. Is Lua Core still an acceptable standard for TASvideos?
ive never made a forum signature before how does this work
Joined: 11/13/2006
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APerson13 wrote:
Let's talk Pikmin 2:
Region
I am making an "All Treasures" TAS (based on the RTA category). Due to significant regional differences particularly with treasure values and weights, the JP version is overall the fastest category. However, the complexity of the carrying speed formula and random cave generation make it near impossible to pinpoint the exact timesave of one version over another. How exactly would this be handled?
The rules on region choice are better explained on this page, which should be replacing our current Movie Rules very soon. In short, we only really enforce 60hz NTSC over 50hz PAL, and we don't obsolete movies through text/cutscene/other unavoidable differences when different regions are used. In your case, it sounds to me like these JP version differences actually affect the gameplay in a way that makes it faster, so it makes sense to me to use it here.
Optimization
The main appeal of TASing this game for me is in the planning/routing. However, my actual gameplay, although faster than any RTA player, often leaves room for improvement, as has been shown by another TASer who focuses more on challenge mode. Would a completed run still be acceptable if a few seconds here and there could be saved with many more hours of fine optimizations?
That's fine. The idea is just that your TAS shouldn't be noticeably suboptimal or easily and greatly improvable, not that it has to be absolutely perfect in every way. If we required absolute perfection, this site wouldn't have any published runs. We expect effort to be put into optimizing, yes, but we absolutely do not force people to spend hours and hours of their free time trying to save every possible frame.
The most important thing is that you make it clear upon submission that there may be improvements here and there. There's a natural progression to TASing. Your skills will improve the longer you work on a game, including your ability to optimize. You'll also almost inevitably find new things throughout the process of working on a run. In some cases, you may find something groundbreaking after weeks or even months of work, something that could save tons of time all throughout the game. We do not force anyone to restart runs over things like this, and frankly we don't even expect people to. If we did, we'd be hypocrites. As long as these improvements are plainly explained in the submission text, they will be excused.
Dolphin Version
I am still planning on using Dolphin Lua Core for the run, despite upcoming TAS improvements to mainline Dolphin. Is Lua Core still an acceptable standard for TASvideos?
As far as I'm aware, Dolphin Lua Core is just the stable 5.0 release with Lua functionality added. It should sync with 5.0 Stable without any issues, and as long as it does, we definitely will accept it. If we decide to deprecate Dolphin 5.0 due to these upcoming changes, I'd imagine it would either be announced long in advance, perhaps even a full year or more, or we would run the idea by the community first. Either way, it's unlikely that we're going to disallow it anytime remotely soon.
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.
I recently finished the tas on experimental core. (bsnesv115+) Is it fine to submit or should I wait until core gets accepted for submission? I'm not planning to try resync on old bsnes core because the run is nearly 3 hours.
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illayaya wrote:
I recently finished the tas on experimental core. (bsnesv115+) Is it fine to submit or should I wait until core gets accepted for submission? I'm not planning to try resync on old bsnes core because the run is nearly 3 hours.
Unless you noticed any major emulation glitches caused by that version of the core, your movie is a proof that the core is good.
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'm doing research about the current game end glitch for Final Fantasy Legend 2 and I have a question about what would be an acceptable ending. The current RTA world record by catklaw that I found just prints the "The End" screen from after the post credits scene. The glitch that was used can also flip the flag for the final boss to be considered beaten and through other effects just requires going to the right NPC to trigger the credits properly. This of course takes a little more time to complete due to more actions to reach the credits roll but is what I consider a more proper ending. Would it be acceptable if I took the slower path for the sake of actually rolling the game's credits or would having the game print the "The End" screen be considered the faster acceptable ending?
I also plan on using GBC mode since the Game Boy Player 1 runs games faster than Game Boy hardware. The different platforms would likely also affect the starting game RNG if it's anything similar to how it's initialized in The Final Fantasy Legend, the first game in the series. That may also affect what the resulting end time come to but is more likely to be accurate to hardware since Super Game Boy initial RAM addresses aren't set correctly for The Final Fantasy Legend in emulators and will probably also apply to Final Fantasy Legend 2.
I'm doing research about the current game end glitch for Final Fantasy Legend 2 and I have a question about what would be an acceptable ending. The current RTA world record by catklaw that I found just prints the "The End" screen from after the post credits scene. The glitch that was used can also flip the flag for the final boss to be considered beaten and through other effects just requires going to the right NPC to trigger the credits properly. This of course takes a little more time to complete due to more actions to reach the credits roll but is what I consider a more proper ending. Would it be acceptable if I took the slower path for the sake of actually rolling the game's credits or would having the game print the "The End" screen be considered the faster acceptable ending?
A more "complete" ending would reduce questions of legitimacy, and it's perfectly fine as a personal choice. It wouldn't be penalized against you.
Darkman425 wrote:
I also plan on using GBC mode since the Game Boy Player 1 runs games faster than Game Boy hardware. The different platforms would likely also affect the starting game RNG if it's anything similar to how it's initialized in The Final Fantasy Legend, the first game in the series. That may also affect what the resulting end time come to but is more likely to be accurate to hardware since Super Game Boy initial RAM addresses aren't set correctly for The Final Fantasy Legend in emulators and will probably also apply to Final Fantasy Legend 2.
As a note in reality initial RAM on hardware is essentially "random with patterns" with said patterns varying with different consoles/environments/etc. It's not really a good measure of accuracy nor legitimacy in the first place as emulators are forced to be deterministic (which initial RAM is not on hardware) since that is needed for TASing (and even for the sake of console verification RAM is set to the same pattern as emulators with custom ROMs before switching over to the actual game). Don't worry about legitimacy issues here, it's the last thing on the list that can cause that kind of issue.
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CasualPokePlayer wrote:
A more "complete" ending would reduce questions of legitimacy, and it's perfectly fine as a personal choice.
Agreed.
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.
This game, MORTAL KOMBAT 4, has 2 interesting modes, Arcade and Endurance. Endurance is harder and shorter, as you only have 1 round for each fight and keep the HP levels between fights. Should Endurance be used instead of the Arcade mode? I feel it might be a little off-putting to use the mode that isn't the main mode for the game. There's also the settings, since in this game you can change round count, which would make both modes very similar.
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
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KusogeMan wrote:
This game, MORTAL KOMBAT 4, has 2 interesting modes, Arcade and Endurance. Endurance is harder and shorter, as you only have 1 round for each fight and keep the HP levels between fights. Should Endurance be used instead of the Arcade mode? I feel it might be a little off-putting to use the mode that isn't the main mode for the game. There's also the settings, since in this game you can change round count, which would make both modes very similar.
If you fight the same fighters in both modes, and Arcade mode would look the same just longer, Endurance is fine to use instead.
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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If a hack is a lot different from the original game, can it be accepted?
It has same sprites (slight modification)
New fresh physics
Different genre of game
Gameplay is good
A bit of entertainment value
Joined: 4/17/2010
Posts: 11478
Location: Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg
MrTASer wrote:
If a hack is a lot different from the original game, can it be accepted?
It has same sprites (slight modification)
New fresh physics
Different genre of game
Gameplay is good
A bit of entertainment value
There's a decent chance it will be accepted. Whether or not we want to keep considering entertainment value for hacks is still to be decided.
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.
Link to video
kreated custom characters have way better combos for speedrunning, how exactly could i use some of them into a TAS?
you gotta buy their moves, but only few moves are needed for this infinite, only 3 HPs and a special move, so athe TAS could have a movie for verification just to prepare for the run
I want all good TAS inside TASvideos, it's my motto.
TAS i'm interested:
Megaman series, specially the RPGs! Where is the mmbn1 all chips TAS we deserve? Where is the Command Mission TAS?
i'm slowly moving away from TASing fighting games for speed, maybe it's time to start finding some entertainment value in TASing.
