(Link to video)
Mario got tired of jumping, so he thought: how do I save the princess with the fewest jumps? Along the way, Mario used all kinds of enemies, and took many underground shortcuts.

Game Objective

  • Minimum A presses
    • Fastest completion
      • Maximum entertainment
This goal can be also called "A button challenge" or "ABC". It basically turns SMB into a puzzle game.
This seemingly restrictive goal leads to the most INSANE and most complicated SMB TAS ever, with lots of nearly impossible moves and crazy glitches that you won't see in other TASes.
We ended up using only 62 A presses. It's also a completion with the fewest jumps.

Background

On October 4, 2016, Kosmic first told HappyLee that he was going to make a TAS of this game with minimal A presses. On March 21, 2018, HappyLee promised to join this project (HappyLee: I just thought it would be fun and challenging. Back then I had no idea how the movie would turn out in the end).
Kosmic provided many interesting initial ideas. Some were proven feasible, such as wall jumping at the beginning of 1-2, turning a Spiny into a Koopa in 4-1, and using a Beetle near the end of 8-1.
From May 25, 2018 to July 28, 2018, HappyLee completed the first version up to 8-1.
Then, for a year and a half, this project was halted, because HappyLee found an A press save at the beginning of 4-1, after finishing 4-2. This reduced HappyLee's motivation, because 4-1 was extremely complex, so having to redo it was going to be really painful.
On February 21, 2020, Kriller37 joined us, and with him new energy came back to this project. He also shared some new ideas, like 8-2 stair clip, getting the fireflower in 1-2, and double stomping a Koopa Paratroopa in 8-4 to save an A press.
On April 2, 2020, periwinkle joined the project. Periwinkle provided help with code analysis that proved vital in manipulating enemy patterns. His efforts allowed us to get the patterns we needed for Bullet Bills, Lakitu, and Cheep Cheeps- most notably making a spreadsheet that allowed us to calculate Cheep Cheep patterns in 8-4.
Along the way we found some demo videos made by RAT926 (poleovermania on YouTube). From these we learned there was an A press save in 1-2 by using a vertical screen wrap to stomp a Koopa near the lifts. We invited RAT926 to join our project, but got no response.
On October 19, 2020, DaSmileKat joined the project. DaSmileKat helped test various hard and precise movements, saved 21 frames in 4-2, proved that the third room of 8-4 could be done in 0 A presses, and was the first to successfully save an A press in the second room 8-4.
We had tons of crazy ideas in the group chat- way more than what's shown in the final movie. Some were proven impossible, and some got obsoleted by better ideas.

Glitches and Concepts

Gravity

Gravity adjustment is crucial to this project. Many setups and moves require certain gravity to work.
Mario's gravity is affected by his most recent jump. He keeps that gravity state until he jumps again. Bouncing on enemies and Springboards won't change gravity.
There are 4 types of gravity in SMB. From the lowest to the highest, we name them using their activation conditions.

Floating / swimming gravity

This is the initial gravity when Mario's starting a new stage, or when coming out of a pipe. It is much lower than the other gravities, causing Mario to appear as if he is floating. It's also the gravity when Mario's swimming.
Mainly used in 8-2 after exiting the pipe, 1-1 after exiting the pipe, and 8-4 after exiting the final pipe.

Walking gravity

You get walking gravity by jumping while walking (speed 16 to 24).
Mainly used in the first half of 8-2, the second room of 8-4, in 8-1, etc.

Standing gravity

You get standing gravity by jumping while standing still, or with very low speed (speed 0 to 15).
Mainly used in 8-4 Cheep Cheep room, and 4-1.

Running gravity

You get running gravity by jumping while running (speed 25 to 40).
Mainly used in the parts of 8-1 with the Buzzy Beetle.

Koopa / Buzzy Beetle walking underground

An old SMB glitch, used many times in this TAS to save A presses, but rarely shown in other SMB TASes.
Koopa's waking time and walking direction are determined by the 21 frame rule.

Stomping an underground enemy above the screen

Also an old SMB glitch, used in 1-2.
In SMB, vertical positions are stored with 3 levels of precision: screen, pixel, and subpixel. However, some interactions are only calculated using the pixel position, meaning that there's effectively a copy of every hitbox in every vertical screen. It is quite similar to the Parallel Universe glitch in SM64. It has other applications other than stomping an underground enemy from above the screen, such as getting a Power-up that falls down a hole by jumping above the screen.

Turning a Spiny into a Koopa

Used in 4-1.
This happens when Mario hits a Spiny from below, while near the left side of the screen. This happens because the function which downgrades a Koopa Paratroopa to a regular Koopa is accidentally triggered when hitting an enemy from below in one of five possible X-coordinates. Depending on the exact coordinate, the Spiny can turn into a red or a green Koopa.

Other glitches used in this TAS

Wall jump, corner clip, full flagpole glitch, wrong warp, bouncing high off enemies ("superjump").

Level Comments

1-1 - 8 A presses

Solution and inputs by HappyLee. Underground room corner clip added by DaSmileKat. Some additional tests by Kriller37 and DaSmileKat.
Getting the Mushroom doesn't cost an extra A press, which makes it the perfect spot. The underground room corner clip is only for entertainment, because 1-1 has many frames to spare. Crossing the large gap after coming out of the pipe is possible by abusing floating/swimming gravity.

1-2 - 4 A presses

Solution and inputs of the first part (wall jumps and running) by HappyLee, solution and inputs of the second part (Koopa, lifts, and getting Fire Flower) by Kriller37. The idea of wall jumps at the start first brought up by Kosmic. Additional Koopa tests by DaSmileKat.
The idea of using underground Koopa and stomping it through the top of the screen was found by RAT926. Kriller37 then developed the idea of getting Fire Flower with 0 A presses, saving an A press compared to the original idea of getting Fire Flower in 4-1. Stomping the Koopa from above the screen without needing to re-stomp it is very precise, since the Koopa needs to be placed in the perfect position down to half a pixel.

4-1 - 6 A presses

Solution and inputs mainly by HappyLee, with Kriller37's help of Lakitu manipulation. The idea of turning Spiny into Koopa first brought up by Kosmic. Special thanks to periwinkle and DaSmileKat for Lakitu code analysis.
Turning the Spiny into a Koopa takes 2 additional A presses, but it saves various jumps because Mario can use the mid-air Koopa to cross small gaps and do ground clips. A glitchless 4-1 would take 13 A presses.

4-2 - 7 A presses

Solution by HappyLee and DaSmileKat, inputs by HappyLee.
4-2 uses the same wrong warp glitch as the any% TAS, but with a ground clip to achieve the needed X position to save A presses.

8-1 - 11 A presses

Solution by HappyLee and Kosmic, inputs by HappyLee. Thanks to Kriller37 for help with testing.
8-1 requires lots of jumps, because it's long and has lots of large gaps. A glitchless 8-1 would normally take 24 A presses.
The first ground clip takes 0 A presses, but it saves 8 jumps. This ground clip can only be done in 0 A presses by having Mario slide out of the wall on the left and then clipping on the right with the highest X acceleration. The initial idea was to use a Goomba because the Koopa is too close to the pit at the time Mario arrives, which leaves no time for getting the highest X acceleration, but later HappyLee found that kicking the Koopa shell and using the shell for the ground clip was much faster.
The second ground clip has a similar principle to the first one. It saves 1 jump.
The underground Beetle is kept for the third ground clip, and for bouncing to the flagpole.

8-2 - 4 A presses

Solution mainly by HappyLee, inputs by HappyLee and Kriller37. Thanks to Kriller37 for great help with testing, and providing the idea of saving a jump by corner clipping through the stairs with a Bullet Bill.
As unbelievable as it is, 8-2 is actually the level with the fewest amount of A presses. Clipping through the ground in 0 A presses has to be one of the most incredible and complicated setups in this TAS. It requires walking gravity, running speed, falling state, and a perfect Bullet Bill. The whole setup not only requires heavy Bullet Bill RNG and enemy manipulation, but also very precise subpixel values. To gather running speed and falling state before touching the Bullet Bill, Mario has to use the tiny space and maximum acceleration to quickly gain running speed, and has to bounce on at least two enemies to reach the tiny hole for the clip.
The current plan of using a Koopa flying backward is the fastest and the most elegant solution, which has evolved many times throughout this project. The original plan was to keep 2 Koopas walking underground, but then HappyLee found a way to stomp the Koopa shell immediately after kicking it, making it possible to do the whole setup with only one Koopa underground.
Heavy Bullet Bill RNG manipulation is used for 8-2, to make the required Bullets shoot in the perfect time. Each cannon has a timer which is influenced by the first 3 enemy slots, and often we need to manipulate multiple cannon timers to shoot at specific frames.
3 additional Bullets are required after the first ground clip. One for the second ground clip, one for getting out from the floor, and one for the giant leap to enter the pipe.
A few frames are wasted waiting in the underground stage, because we aimed for getting the best Bullet Bill RNG after coming out from the pipe. The RNG that caused the cannon to fire twice in a short time right after coming out from the pipe is extremely rare.
For the 2 Goombas + Bullet Bill bounce stair clip to work, an "invisible Bullet" was used to push the Beetle to load at the 4th enemy slot, so the required Bullet Bill can be shot.
The ending double Bullet Bills are not necessary, but faster than one Bullet because of full flagpole glitch.
Having done 8-2 without using any pauses, while getting all the perfect & fastest Bullets may look smooth and natural, but in fact it's unbelievably hard.

8-3 - 7 A presses

Solution mainly by HappyLee and DaSmileKat, inputs by DaSmileKat and HappyLee.
We choose to use 2 underground Koopas instead of Bullet Bills for the ending part, because it saves an extra A press.
The first ground clip is much more complicated than it looks, and we've developed many versions. The first versions require a Bullet Bill, to keep the Koopa at a specific height. Later we found that it's faster to do the ground clip without a Bullet Bill, and it's faster to let the second Koopa walk ahead of the first Koopa, and use both of them to get across the final giant gap.
For the final ground clip, we need walking gravity. Mario can't reach the pipe from inside the ground with a walking speed jump, so HappyLee came up with the very clever solution of bouncing on the Koopa and then doing a walljump. This lets us load the next Koopa as soon as possible as well.
We experimented with many different ideas in this level, searching for ways to save more A presses or do the level faster, and this is the best solution we found to be possible.

8-4 15 A presses in total

Room 1 - 6 A presses

Inputs by HappyLee.
A simple room with no clever solution.

Room 2 - 2 A presses

Solution by HappyLee, Kriller37 and DaSmileKat, inputs by HappyLee.
Crossing the gap between the two pipes with 2 Koopa Paratroopas with 0 jumps is the final A press save found in this TAS. It's only possible when Mario stomps the first Koopa Paratroopa twice. The idea was first raised by Kriller37 and first proved possible by DaSmileKat, and the fastest setup was found by HappyLee, which requires very precise enemy manipulation to get the two Koopa Paratroopas to leap to that exact location.
Holding A while entering the pipe saves an A press for the next room.

Room 3 - 0 A presses

Solution by HappyLee and DaSmileKat, inputs by HappyLee. Special thanks to periwinkle for Cheep Cheep code analysis, and to DaSmileKat for actually creating a program for calculating Cheep Cheeps.
The A button was held for the entire room, so a jump is buffered at the beginning of the room, as well as a swim at the beginning of the next room. The room was cleared with no additional jumps.
This crazy idea was first proven possible by DaSmileKat. Before that, HappyLee made a version with only 1 A press, which was the jump to the tall pipe, because HappyLee thought to line up a huge wave of Cheep Cheeps at Mario's feet would be impossible.
DaSmileKat's first demo requires 13 Cheep Cheeps in total for this room. After that, HappyLee developed a much faster strategy, and reduced the total Cheep Cheeps required to 9.
DaSmileKat also developed the rising Cheep clip, which is usually faster than waiting for Cheep Cheeps to fall down. The rising Cheep clip is used to get through the tall pipe for the first time.
Mario needs to pass through the tall pipe twice. The first time only aims to get through the pipe to scroll the screen further- not only to load the pipe exit info, but also to allow 3 Cheep Cheeps to appear on the screen at the same time. The second time aims for getting on the pipe. One of the Cheep Cheeps is used only to adjust Mario's Y subpixel inside the pipe, since some Y subpixel values don't allow Mario to get 1 block higher with a Cheep bounce.
Pausing is used many times for Cheep Cheep RNG manipulation. It's theoretically possible to do this whole room without pausing, but the waiting time would be painfully long, so pausing is actually faster.
The Cheep Cheep setup used in the final version is found by HappyLee, and double checked by DaSmileKat to make sure it's completely optimized.

Room 4 - 5 A presses

Inputs by HappyLee.
Holding A at the beginning of this room doesn't save an A press (because there's an alternative strategy by doing a corner clip), but it does save time.
Sadly, we couldn't kill any Bloopers because it would affect Firebars and cost time.

Room 5 - 2 A presses

Inputs by Kriller37, Kosmic and HappyLee.
Mario has to wait a very long time at the start of this room for the Hammer Bro to charge towards him. We have floating/swimming gravity here, since we haven't jumped in this room yet, so bouncing on the hammer brother reaches the next pipe and saves 1 A press.

Authors' Comments

HappyLee

When Kosmic and I started this project, we never could have guessed how crazy it would turn out. I'm so happy that after 3 years, we've finally finished this extremely complicated project.
This couldn't be done without our wonderful and talented teammates. Kriller37 and DaSmileKat contributed a lot to this TAS, and found many astonishing improvements. I'm so proud to be on this great team.
This is truly a complicated and nerve-wracking project. We've made 3 versions of 1-2, 4-1, and 8-2. For many times I almost wanted to quit, because having to redo 4-1 entertainment and 8-2 luck manipulation is extremely painful. But we've still made it to the end.
Special thanks to RAT926 and Mars608, who've helped with some ideas of this TAS.
By the way, just as we finished this TAS and when I was writing this submission text, I've found another improvement that's going to change a lot of later RNG. It's so frustrating to me, because we've tried so hard to create a perfect TAS, but still I could miss something, even though I was really careful and precise and have thought a lot during testing. By this stage, I've decided to save this for future improvements. Perhaps creating a perfect TAS is a myth, but at least we've tried our best, and I'm satisfied with our work.

Kriller37

In early 2020 Kosmic showed me some of HappyLee's tests and first versions of many of the levels of this minimum A press TAS from 2018, and they absolutely blew my mind. There were so many crazy strats I never would have thought of and included lots of tricks and glitches you rarely see in any other TASes. I was blown away by how insane the TAS was.
This sparked my interest in minimum A press TASing, and I ended up making a minimum A press TAS of 5-1 in SMB1, featuring a wall clip through the staircase at the end of the level. A couple days later, Happylee messaged me in discord talking about that TAS of 5-1 I had just made, and then asked me if I wanted to help him work on his minimum A press TAS. I remember being so excited that Happylee had asked me this.
Throughout the making of this whole TAS, there were so many crazy ideas we all had, and almost every idea we had ended up working. There were very few things we tried and tested that we couldn't pull off which was very satisfying.
I remember when me and happylee got back to 8-2 for the first time since I started helping, we were trying to figure out the best way to do that first floor clip which at the time required 2 A presses I think. Then happylee said he had an idea to do it in 0 A presses, but wouldn't explain what his idea was because he thought it would be way too complicated to try to explain, and he was hoping his idea would not work just so we didn't have to figure out a way to pull off his insane idea. After a little while though he did prove his idea possible, and this strategy again just blew my mind. There is so much precision and manipulation going on in 8-2 that you can't see from just watching the TAS, it is crazy. I still cant believe that 8-2 is possible in 4 A presses.
All the crazy RNG manipulation in 8-2 took a really really long time to complete, and there was many times throughout the making of this TAS where we would complete 8-2 and get very close to finishing the whole TAS, and then find an improvement early on in the TAS and then have to redo all of 8-2 and other levels as well. It was really discouraging at times, but I am so glad we kept working and finished this TAS because it made the final project that much more amazing.
This is one of my first big TAS projects I have ever worked on and now completed, and I can't express how happy I am to have worked on this. I am so incredibly thankful for HappyLee and Kosmic to have invited me to work on this project with them, and Periwinkle and DaSmileKat joining in only made the whole experience of working on this TAS even better. This TAS means so much to me, and I am so happy to finally be able to show it to everyone. Thank you to everyone in the SMB1 community as well, I love you all and you are all amazing people :)

DaSmileKat

Before being invited, I had seen a video from HappyLee demonstrating the 8-2 solution. It was very clever, but I did not realize just how hard pulling such a thing off really is.
When I was invited, I saw the rest of this TAS, and it was incredible. I had some ideas of what the rest of the TAS was going to be like, but the actual TAS blew my mind. It really expanded what I knew was possible in SMB.
After starting work on it, I quickly discovered that my usual method of TASing (steadily working my way through a level and optimizing any complex movements that I face) isn't going to work here. The problems faced in this TAS are just too complicated. So I created a model of SMB's vertical physics, combined it with a brute force program, and used it to help test 1-1, 1-2, and 8-3. Of them, 8-3 was the most complicated. I had many ideas for that level, and it took a while to manually search through the program's results to see which would work.
And then 8-4 presented me with a whole new problem that I never encountered before: manipulating the random Cheeps. Periwinkle provided the Cheep-spawning mechanics, and I was able to make another brute-force tool that optimizes Cheeps given the required positions and speeds. Despite that, finding the correct Cheep positions and speeds to make the strategy work was a pain as well. But I was eventually able to finish the room, and then we found the second room A press save which messed up the RNG. The second time around, HappyLee did most of the work, while I double-checked to make sure it is perfect.
Finally, I would like to thank my teammates: HappyLee, Kriller37, Periwinkle, and Kosmic. They did a lot of hard work and had many brilliant ideas, most notably in 8-2, which looked so hard that I didn't attempt it. In addition, I was invited pretty late into the project, meaning that they had already finished many parts. I would never have been able to finish the project without them.

Kosmic

I first started having thoughts about a TAS like this a very long time ago, in February of 2016, when I did this. Minimal A Press TASes were pretty popular in Super Mario 64, and I started wondering what one would look like for this game.
I had some very exciting initial ideas, such as walljumping up at the start of 1-2, and especially turning a Spiny into a Koopa at the start of 4-1, so you could clip into the ground with it. I knew that I didn't have the skills to make this TAS happen, so I asked HappyLee for help.
We started working on it, and I was very impressed with HappyLee's solution for the ending of 1-1. My idea for the beginning of 1-2 turned out to be possible. Unfortunately, the warp zone at the end couldn't be loaded by doing a moonwalk to scroll the screen while on top of the world 4 warp pipe, but later we got a better solution anyway.
I asked HappyLee if a ground clip in 8-1 would be possible in a 1 block wide gap. He said he had never tried such a thing before, so he wasn't sure. Soon afterwards, he told me he had done it! I was proud to be involved in a project that was doing brand new things in Super Mario Bros. That first solution for the ground clip required a jump. I can't believe how things evolved from there- doing the 8-1 ground clip without a jump, and especially the 8-2 and 8-3 ground clips without jumps.
I knew 8-2 with its bullet bills and 8-4 with its Cheep Cheeps would be extremely complicated levels, and I'm very grateful for all the help we got from Periwinkle, Kriller37, and DaSmileKat. Doing 8-2 and 8-4 in the number of jumps we did feels like a dream come true.
I had many ideas for this TAS but wasn't skilled enough to contribute very much for the actual inputs, so I'm extremely grateful to all the other authors for making this TAS a reality.

periwinkle

I'm honored to have the opportunity to work with HappyLee, Kosmic, Kriller37, and DaSmileKat on this project—they are all amazing members of the SMB1 community that I look up to, and I never thought I'd get to do a collaboration like this with them. Thanks to them for all of the hard work! (Sorry I couldn't do much more myself.)
While I don't consider myself a master TASer, I do like to take deep dives into the internal workings of a game and figure out how it works under the hood. Occasionally, someone will come to me asking "How does (X) work?" or "How can (Y) be manipulated?", and while I don't always have an answer right away, my approach is usually "Let me look into it and find out for you". In this instance, my involvement in this project is really the collision of two separate worlds:
Just over a year ago (in April 2020), Kriller37 posed a (rather veiled) question to some members of the SMB community: How close together could two bullet bills be shot from the same launcher? This seemed like an interesting (if seemingly academic) question to me, so I did some tests and responded with my results. Little did I know, Kriller was actually testing strategies for this TAS! While that particular idea didn't quite pan out in the end, the knowledge of exactly how the bullet timers work and how to control them precisely proved to be crucial for the final 8-2 strategy.
Meanwhile, Kriller37 and DaSmileKat had both approached me independently (and for unrelated purposes) asking about Cheep Cheep manipulations. After figuring out exactly how Cheep Cheep decide their spawn timing, speed, and position, I produced a spreadsheet model implementing this, which would later come in handy for this project as DaSmileKat wrote a brute-force program using these mechanics to help with testing and optimizing 8-4 Cheep Cheep room strategies.
Beyond all of that, there's still so much more technical prowess that went into this TAS! Big shoutouts again to the rest of the crew for all of their research and efforts making even half of what you see here a reality. This TAS is truly the craziest demonstration yet of what is possible in SMB1. Hope you all enjoy :)

Suggested screenshot


adelikat: Claimed for judging

adelikat: This movie is an impressive technical achievement and while it wasn't unanimous, it entertained a large majority of the audience (75% approval, 8% disapproval). While it is an atypical goal choice, it is one that has clearly defined rules. Furthermore, the publication demonstrates many techniques that other publications do not offer, and distinguishes itself in gameplay from those other categories even for the general audience. This meets all the criteria for the Alternative tier. I am accepting for publication to this tier as a new branch for this game.
EZGames69: Processing

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Posts: 11251
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Acumenium wrote:
No one can compete because it's strictly a TAS run due to the bizarre frame-perfect glitching and use of multiple directions here. Walkathons can be competed with by normal people. Doesn't matter if the TAS is faster---you can at least try to play against it, and it's a goal that real people can try and entertain.
You're basically saying that being superhuman (TAS only) is a flaw of this TAS. I've never seen such an argument before.
Acumenium wrote:
If ROM hacks have to enter a fierce survival of the fittest to determine what can occupy the limited spaces of Moons when the hacks only faintly relate to each other in terms of entertainment space, I am very curious why entirely arbitrary goals like only pressing one of the buttons [x] amount of times is something that can be kept and maintained as a tier, especially when the goal has no possible speed focus. Routing can determine how quickly you can complete a walkathon, so there's still an element of speedrunning to those. This has none, speed is not a focus.
I already explained why 62 A presses is not an arbitrary number. Did you skip that part? And yes, this movie does aim for shortest time as a secondary goal, lowest A being the primary one.
Acumenium wrote:
Per Oxford and Merriam-Webster, both sourced there, the words are indeed a bit different and minimal refers to something that is almost at the lowest point, but not quite.
Yeah let's quote the actual thing they linked:
minimum
    1 The least or smallest amount or quantity possible, attainable, or required. ‘keep costs to a minimum’
      1.1 The lowest or smallest amount of a varying quantity (e.g. temperature) allowed, attained, or recorded. ‘clients with a minimum of £500,000 to invest’
The 1.1 is literally what this movie is. And if you look closely at the example for 1, it also matches: it doesn't require a proof that there's absolutely no way on earth to make it even lower. Just presence of a goal and some cost that's considered attainable minimum, not even known in advance. Exactly like this movie.
Acumenium wrote:
Speed is an arbitrary goal if there's no end point. How fast you can run does not matter if it's not specifying for how long, or for what distance. Everyone can be Usain Bolt for one step but I don't think they'll be like him for a ten yard dash, or for an hour. Super Mario Bros. has a clear ending point: saving Princess Peach. If ACE could do this at the title screen, that would be the fastest method to do it, like in Mario 3. I wouldn't even compare this type of run to the submitted and likely to be canceled run of SMS California Games as that at least lists a defined goal that is easily understandable: you beat the default high score. That is the "endpoint". Going past it makes no sense per the game itself.
I don't see what point you're proving here.
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.
Acumenium
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NxCy wrote:
I'm not really a fan of using words like arbitrary in these discussions. My quick google search yields the following definition: "based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system". Minimizing A presses (and then time) is a clearly defined goal and was presumably chosen because it's a technically interesting challenge with notably different gameplay to the traditional speed-first categories (how interesting you find it is obviously subjective). I don't consider that to be random choice or mere personal whim. But even if you think it is arbitrary because the goal choice is still in some sense subjective or random, so what? Why is it a problem if it leads to an interesting movie with notably different gameplay to already existing categories? If you weren't entertained then fair enough, but I don't understand comments like "no because it's arbitrary". I think whenever these offbeat categories come up the movie itself is the argument for why the seemingly arbitrary goal choice is a good one: if the movie is good then the category is good. I don't think a TAS being comparable to RTA runs is really relevant in relation to potential publication on TASvideos.
Ordinarily no, TASes are not supposed to relate to RTAs. But this isn't even a TAS. It's an arbitary player-enforced goal. I also can't see how this differs very much from a normal non-ABC run of Super Mario Bros. other than it being painfully slow. - The same levels as the warps run are used. - No new screens are visited. - New techniques are shown that immediately proceed minutes of waiting in the floor. - It is a TAS of a challenge that is supposed to be player relatable and yet none of the new tricks used to get stuck in the floors repeatedly and so on are actually possible in real time. The last one is particularly relevant, I think, as that removes a major entertainment factor of the ABC in the first place. It didn't lead to an interesting movie at all. Play the normal TAS at 0.5x speed, it'll still go faster and be more interesting than watching an enemy waddle across the ground for minutes at a time. If a low-level challenge of an RPG had you able to beat the first boss at level 3 at the earliest, or level 1 with the use of TAS tools like save/load states and so on, a TAS of it isn't very interesting for the purpose of watching someone try to beat it. ---
You're basically saying that being superhuman (TAS only) is a flaw of this TAS. I've never seen such an argument before.
Because being unrelatably superhuman is harmful to this challenge in terms of entertainment. I gave an RPG scenario just above this quote. Look at it. When the infamous "No Sphere Grid, No Summons, No Customization, No Overdrives" challenge of Final Fantasy X was finally beaten, many had done it with emulators, but those weren't entertaining runs. Everyone knew what it would look like to beat it, it's just that for many years, the RNG never lined up. Save state abuse wouldn't have led to anything entertaining, and even this video would probably be seen as uninteresting to those who aren't interested in low-level challenges or who might be but aren't aware how brutally hard this actually is and how low the chances to win even are. This fails at being entertaining to anyone wishing to watch the challenge for the minimal A Button aspect due to not being possible to imitate, and it fails from a general entertainment perspective due to how boring it is with all of the forced waits on the same old screens as every other speedrun of SMB. Which is the real thing here. The walkathon would probably be more boring if it was the same boring route like this, but it's not. It being warpless showed off a lot more of the game and showcased far more areas where not being able to run really hurts.
I don't see what point you're proving here.
This run is entirely arbitrary. It assigns a "goal" at complete random. Another run for a game that is the first of its kind is going to be rejected on the basis that beating the game-assigned high scores is "arbitrary", but a player-assigned goal with no clear end ("62 A buttons") is somehow acceptable as the umpteenth branch of a game? Board games are typically disallowed here no matter how technically impressive because they're boring. Why is this okay as an umpteenth branch?
Bigbass
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Acumenium wrote:
Ordinarily no, TASes are not supposed to relate to RTAs. But this isn't even a TAS. It's an arbitary player-enforced goal.
Minimum time is a player-enforced goal just the same as minimum A presses. And this most certainly qualifies as a TAS. I'm honestly not sure how this couldn't be a TAS. It is first a superplay, and second a speedrun, and it is tool-assisted. By definition and by convention this is a TAS.
Acumenium wrote:
I also can't see how this differs very much from a normal non-ABC run of Super Mario Bros. other than it being painfully slow. - The same levels as the warps run are used. - No new screens are visited. - New techniques are shown that immediately proceed minutes of waiting in the floor. - It is a TAS of a challenge that is supposed to be player relatable and yet none of the new tricks used to get stuck in the floors repeatedly and so on are actually possible in real time.
It differs by focusing on an entirely different primary goal than the other TASes: Minimum A presses. (with fastest completion and maximum entertainment being secondary and tertiary goals). So what if it's the same levels as warps? That doesn't detract from the entertainment of the run, and if anything, speeds up the TAS by skipping levels, which is what you seem to want. Reviewing the run, I don't see any instances of "minutes of waiting", whether they proceeded a new technique or not. There's one instance at the beginning of 8-4, where the player waits about 30 seconds at most, and even so they are still moving around. Unless I missed something, there's nothing in the submission notes that say it was "supposed to be player relatable." And again, it's a TAS, so there's no reason it should have to be completable by a human.
Acumenium wrote:
It didn't lead to an interesting movie at all. Play the normal TAS at 0.5x speed, it'll still go faster and be more interesting than watching an enemy waddle across the ground for minutes at a time.
54 people thought it was an entertaining movie, so it must be fairly interesting. Playing the encode back at a faster speed wouldn't change the number of frames needed to complete the game with the least number of A presses. And it's not possible to playback the TAS on hardware at a non-hardware speed.
Acumenium wrote:
This fails at being entertaining to anyone wishing to watch the challenge for the minimal A Button aspect due to not being possible to imitate
There are no rules against a TAS being impossible for a human to imitate; again, that is the point of making TASes. To create the perfect run, according to certain goals.
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Acumenium
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Bigbass wrote:
Acumenium wrote:
Ordinarily no, TASes are not supposed to relate to RTAs. But this isn't even a TAS. It's an arbitary player-enforced goal.
Minimum time is a player-enforced goal just the same as minimum A presses. And this most certainly qualifies as a TAS. I'm honestly not sure how this couldn't be a TAS. It is first a superplay, and second a speedrun, and it is tool-assisted. By definition and by convention this is a TAS.
Acumenium wrote:
I also can't see how this differs very much from a normal non-ABC run of Super Mario Bros. other than it being painfully slow. - The same levels as the warps run are used. - No new screens are visited. - New techniques are shown that immediately proceed minutes of waiting in the floor. - It is a TAS of a challenge that is supposed to be player relatable and yet none of the new tricks used to get stuck in the floors repeatedly and so on are actually possible in real time.
It differs by focusing on an entirely different primary goal than the other TASes: Minimum A presses. (with fastest completion and maximum entertainment being secondary and tertiary goals). So what if it's the same levels as warps? That doesn't detract from the entertainment of the run, and if anything, speeds up the TAS by skipping levels, which is what you seem to want. Reviewing the run, I don't see any instances of "minutes of waiting", whether they proceeded a new technique or not. There's one instance at the beginning of 8-4, where the player waits about 30 seconds at most, and even so they are still moving around. Unless I missed something, there's nothing in the submission notes that say it was "supposed to be player relatable." And again, it's a TAS, so there's no reason it should have to be completable by a human.
Acumenium wrote:
It didn't lead to an interesting movie at all. Play the normal TAS at 0.5x speed, it'll still go faster and be more interesting than watching an enemy waddle across the ground for minutes at a time.
54 people thought it was an entertaining movie, so it must be fairly interesting. Playing the encode back at a faster speed wouldn't change the number of frames needed to complete the game with the least number of A presses. And it's not possible to playback the TAS on hardware at a non-hardware speed.
Acumenium wrote:
This fails at being entertaining to anyone wishing to watch the challenge for the minimal A Button aspect due to not being possible to imitate
There are no rules against a TAS being impossible for a human to imitate; again, that is the point of making TASes. To create the perfect run, according to certain goals.
What is a "superplay"? Common usage of the term "TAS" refers to tool-assisted speedruns. It differs by doing the same task but slower? That is your argument? Not one screen here differs from any shown in the main TAS. The argument of claiming it's "akshully superplay not speedrun" and the focus on "why are you so worried about branches?" feels strange when you have asinine cases like #4017 GBC The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (USA v1.0) in 27:55.02 by TwistedTammer obsoleting #1462 GBC The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (USA v1.0) in 1:00:02.68 by Swordless Link. This causes a bad case where there's no actual full playthrough of Link's Awakening. In that case, it was determined making a new branch "did not make sense" even though one run more or less walks through walls and the other does not. You have: - GB ACE - GB Screen Warp - GB Playaround - GBC Warp Glitch - GBC Out Of Bounds But No Warp Glitch (#4017) We have five branches for the same game and none of them actually go through the game without going out of bounds? And why do we have the woefully redundant GBC Warp Glitch and GB Screen Warp? I find this especially odd since the no warp branch was restored to Pokemon Red/Blue/Yellow at one point when all of the ACE/SC/MC glitch runs were obsoleting full playthroughs. Did this fly under the radar or is "no out of bounds" considered, for whatever reason, "arbitrary"? I'm really curious how you didn't notice how many minutes of this run were spent waiting for something to happen. Or do you think slowly scrolling through a level to wait for an enemy to finally waddle to a specific point isn't "waiting" since the player is moving, but slowly? No, TASes do not have to be player relatable. Generally speaking, challenges like these are supposed to be though. Which I've explained many times. You haven't seen any of the explanations? Does the poll really count when almost every thread features the Judges having to yell at people what the poll even means? If this run is accepted we will have seven runs of the NES version of this game alone. - FDS Super Mario Bros. (JPN) "-3 stage ending" in 02:44.61 by HappyLee. - NES Super Mario Bros. (JPN/USA) "warpless" in 18:36.78 by HappyLee & Mars608. - NES Super Mario Bros. (JPN/USA) "maximum coins" in 26:10.25 by CuteQt, Tehh_083 & HappyLee. - NES Super Mario Bros. (JPN/USA PRG0) "warps" in 04:57.31 by HappyLee. - NES Super Mario Bros. (JPN/USA) "warpless, walkathon" in 25:19.23 by Mars608 & HappyLee. - NES Super Mario Bros. (JPN/USA) "all items" in 19:48.68 by DaSmileKat, HappyLee & Mars608. - #7094: HappyLee, Kriller37, DaSmileKat, Kosmic & periwinkle's NES Super Mario Bros. "minimum A presses" in 10:24.39 I don't want to hear about how there's "competition" for space when it comes to any other game or ROM hack again even if the ROM hacks have nothing to do with each other.
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Acumenium wrote:
What is a "superplay"? Common usage of the term "TAS" refers to tool-assisted speedruns.
The button that leads to the TASvideos main page at the top left corner of this page literally says "Tool-assisted superplay movies."
Acumentium wrote:
It differs by doing the same task but slower? That is your argument? Not one screen here differs from any shown in the main TAS.
Well, that is incorrect since the 8-2 underground room is not shown in the standard warps TAS. In addition, this TAS does not try to do the same task as the warps TAS. You can see that at many sections, most notably in 8-2 and the third room of 8-4.
Acumenium wrote:
I'm really curious how you didn't notice how many minutes of this run were spent waiting for something to happen. Or do you think slowly scrolling through a level to wait for an enemy to finally waddle to a specific point isn't "waiting" since the player is moving, but slowly?
Indeed, there were many minutes spent waiting in this TAS. But if that is defined as waiting, I might as well say that well over 10 minutes of the warpless TAS is spent waiting for Mario to run to a specific spot (usually the flagpole).
Acumenium wrote:
No, TASes do not have to be player relatable. Generally speaking, challenges like these are supposed to be though.
The SM64 ABC has 14 A presses the last time I've checked, yet almost none of it is humanly possible.
Kung_Knut
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This run is entirely arbitrary. It assigns a "goal" at complete random. Another run for a game that is the first of its kind is going to be rejected on the basis that beating the game-assigned high scores is "arbitrary", but a player-assigned goal with no clear end ("62 A buttons") is somehow acceptable as the umpteenth branch of a game?
Acumenium, while I don't agree with all of your opinions, you are entitled to have them, and I defend your right to express them. But let's stop this nonsense about the category being "62 A presses". It is not. It is "as few A presses as the player could achieve at the time of making the TAS". I agree that "62 A presses" is arbitrary, but that is not what this is.
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Acumenium wrote:
Ordinarily no, TASes are not supposed to relate to RTAs. But this isn't even a TAS. It's an arbitary player-enforced goal. I also can't see how this differs very much from a normal non-ABC run of Super Mario Bros. other than it being painfully slow. - The same levels as the warps run are used. - No new screens are visited. - New techniques are shown that immediately proceed minutes of waiting in the floor. - It is a TAS of a challenge that is supposed to be player relatable and yet none of the new tricks used to get stuck in the floors repeatedly and so on are actually possible in real time. The last one is particularly relevant, I think, as that removes a major entertainment factor of the ABC in the first place. It didn't lead to an interesting movie at all. Play the normal TAS at 0.5x speed, it'll still go faster and be more interesting than watching an enemy waddle across the ground for minutes at a time. If a low-level challenge of an RPG had you able to beat the first boss at level 3 at the earliest, or level 1 with the use of TAS tools like save/load states and so on, a TAS of it isn't very interesting for the purpose of watching someone try to beat it.
It's funny because I think of the four points you listed the first three are reasonable and the last is quite baffling. If you didn't enjoy the movie or didn't find it interesting because it was slow and wasn't different enough to you, I think that's completely reasonable feedback and I respect your opinion. I can't understand at all your final point and it looks like I'm not the only one. At the risk of repeating what has already been said: how is the movie any less relatable than any other TAS? You can try and beat the game yourself in as few A presses as possible. I guess you could do it in a few hundred. The TAS will inevitably do it in fewer presses and you really have no chance of getting close. Similarly you could try to beat a game as fast as possible. The TAS will be faster and you have no realistic chance of competing unless it's a very simple game. If you think the lack of comparability to human runs is a reason for it not being entertaining to you, then fair enough, but understand that for a lot of people this isn't really relevant, especially on TASvideos. I think a lot of people actually enjoy TASes precisely because they're so different to RTAs. Lastly, I don't think you get to define what is or isn't a TAS. There are lots of TASes (and speed runs) that put time as a secondary goal.
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54 people thought it was an entertaining movie, so it must be fairly interesting. Playing the encode back at a faster speed wouldn't change the number of frames needed to complete the game with the least number of A presses. And it's not possible to playback the TAS on hardware at a non-hardware speed.
This might be an unpopular opinion here, but speed is just one thing I consider about entertainment. One of the things I liked about the SMB3 tas by Tompa is that it earned 100 lives. There was a long debate between the people that wanted to cut that out because it's an extraneous goal. But I think that loses sight of what TAS videos is all about. It's about fun. Getting 100 lives in SMB3 is a part of the fun. It's fun seeing mario stomp on all the cannonballs, and the cool tricks needed to be used. The goal of 100 lives doesn't detract from the run, it enhances it. The other thing I try to look at is, "what is the spirit of the run?" Why was it made? What were they trying to achieve? Everyone is entitled to their own entertainment standard. There are also historically significant runs that create techniques that are then used on other games. Like the SMW Arbitrary Code Execution etc. If your run debuts a new technique, I'm interested! And I will vote yes on it, because I think it's important that these techniques be documented here. Why did I vote yes on this run? Lots of reasons. 1, is this run technically precise? Absolutely! Is it flawless and unimprovable? No, but that doesn't take away from the precision. 2. is this run humanly possible? No. Again, that's a point in it's favor. 3. Is this run on a significant game? Yes. 4. Is the path that the TAS uses obvious? No. 5. Does it showcase a significant portion of the game and beat it at it's hardest difficulty? Yes. I think 4 is the best reason to vote for this TAS. The path that it uses to beat the game is NOT obvious, and improvements were being made even as the video was in production. That shows to me that there is significant work 'underneath the hood', and that this is a category worthy of a TAS. That doesn't mean I'm going to vote no on a 'run right for justice run', if that is the fastest way to beat a game. I can't fault a runner for working with what he has to work with. But if a game has subtlety inside it that this particular run draws out, then I'm into that. But YMMV! I just wanted to explain my thought process behind my yes vote.
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I watched this a couple of times. It is much like the SM64 A Button Challenge: A remarkable technical achievement that absolutely cannot be reduced to "let's take any game and see how few times we can press ____". Above all: While entertainment is subjective (I would agree), I emphasize that HappyLee, Kriller37, DaSmileKat, Kosmic & periwinkle laid out clear objectives (Primary: Minimize number of A presses; Secondary: Fastest completion) and achieved this TAS accordingly. Nothing can ever take this away from them. Not any voting polls. Not any judging decisions. Not anyone who resorts to attacking the authors' objectives in an attempt to keep this TAS off the site. No matter what happens, the authors did exactly what they set out to do with no strings attached, and they ought to be proud of it.
EZGames69
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since the actual rerecord count was lost during the making of this TAS, should it be nuked and just displayed as "Unknown"? scratch that, I'll just go with the provided one.
[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
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [4444] NES Super Mario Bros. "minimum jumps" by HappyLee, Kriller37, DaSmileKat, Kosmic & periwinkle in 10:24.39
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Acumenium
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NxCy wrote:
It's funny because I think of the four points you listed the first three are reasonable and the last is quite baffling. If you didn't enjoy the movie or didn't find it interesting because it was slow and wasn't different enough to you, I think that's completely reasonable feedback and I respect your opinion. I can't understand at all your final point and it looks like I'm not the only one. At the risk of repeating what has already been said: how is the movie any less relatable than any other TAS? You can try and beat the game yourself in as few A presses as possible. I guess you could do it in a few hundred. The TAS will inevitably do it in fewer presses and you really have no chance of getting close. Similarly you could try to beat a game as fast as possible. The TAS will be faster and you have no realistic chance of competing unless it's a very simple game. If you think the lack of comparability to human runs is a reason for it not being entertaining to you, then fair enough, but understand that for a lot of people this isn't really relevant, especially on TASvideos. I think a lot of people actually enjoy TASes precisely because they're so different to RTAs. Lastly, I don't think you get to define what is or isn't a TAS. There are lots of TASes (and speed runs) that put time as a secondary goal.
The issue is that challenges are supposed to be relatable and entertaining. Low-level runs of RPGs aren't fun or relatable if you watch a video of someone save scumming/TASing every hit to miss you at a 0.01% chance for an hour. That's not practically a low level run, it will never actually happen. I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand. Right now, it's not a challenge, because it's a TAS, there's no such thing as difficulty. At the same time, the goal is bleakly arbitrary. This isn't relatable. The last sentence is also hypocritical. If I have no right to an opinion or right to express it, neither do you. You're accusing me of a bigger podium than I have by doing the same thing you are accusing me of. "Superplay" also feels subjective. Visually, nothing is impressive at all about this run. The player gets stuck in the ground for minutes at a time, waits for a turtle to waddle, hits it to go up a bit, repeat, so on. That's not visually impressive. Is it technically impressive? Yes. So would a great many "boring" board games. But 99% of people watching this are not going to be realizing why it is technically impressive. My biggest problem with this movie was knowing it'd get published as it represents incredibly bad problems with the publication system here. - Super Mario Bros. runs are frequently turned down due to being "hard to accept". This doesn't seem to be particularly true. The issue is I've seen this as a rejection reason for additional runs of other games, or for "arbitrary goals" like not taking damage at all. It's also used as a reason to reject ROM hacks or paradoxically have ROM hacks obsolete one another. It was recently said a new non-Kaizo ROM hack of Super Mario Bros. 3 would obsolete Mario Adventure if accepted---why? What would it even have in common with it? There's no "high sense of standards", Super Mario Bros. has seven published runs. Two of them seem to be arbitrary when separated from a first glance but I don't think "all coins" and "all item boxes" can be done in the same run, making the separation necessary and not arbitrary. Neither description mentions this, though. - Runs with very little original gameplay obsolete full game runs instead of existing concurrent as a different branch because "we have too many branches", said by Judges who accept the seventh Super Mario Bros. entry. I already pointed this out with Link's Awakening where we have no real runs of it. The closest thing is the 27 minute run of Link's Awakening DX where it consistently goes out of bounds, obsoleting a run that doesn't, and two different "warp glitch" runs of Link's Awakening (DX) exist too, differing by the setup at best. Or Mega Man. There's no zipless runs of any of the games to feature zipping glitches, and I'm not really sure why. - Categorizing runs is "too difficult" because glitches "are arbitrary", as a run is accepted with an arbitrary and non-definite goal like "don't press A very much". I have unironically seen "zipless" runs be considered "arbitrary and will be rejected if submitted" here. Link's Awakening would be solved by restoring 2565S as a branch titled "No Out Of Bounds". That's not arbitrary, it doesn't go out of bounds at all unlike the run that "obsoleted" it. I don't organize my thoughts well. This post could probably be condensed like many posts I make. Guess why I never pursued a career in journalism? tl;dr: In a vacuum, this run doesn't have an issue. It isn't very interesting to me but it doesn't have to be. It being accepted represents serious flaws in the publishing system as a whole. It should've been immediately rejected given what many other runs and branches have to put up with, but it wasn't. It was rather accepted for every reason those types of runs are rejected.
Samsara
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An "arbitrary goal" on TASvideos defines the submission, not the goal itself. We only rarely get submissions where the goal itself is actually arbitrary: "One glitch", "human theory", things like that where the actual goal is prone to subjective change and thus can't be concretely defined. I understand the confusion, it's happened to people before, but I genuinely don't know how to redefine it without just using the word "arbitrary". As long as people are aware that it defines the publishability of the category and not the goal of the category, it makes perfect sense. Think of it this way: When a run is stated to be arbitrary on TASvideos, 99% of the time that is in reference to the other published runs on the site. Say we have a published any% run for a game that takes damage three times because it's a few frames faster to do so: A "no damage" run of the same game would likely be considered arbitrary, as it would only be a few frames slower while being almost entirely the same as the published run. For new branches, we want minimal content overlap, i.e every published run of a game should be significantly different enough so that people never feel like they're watching the same run twice. If taking damage is significantly faster than carefully taking the time to avoid it, then a damageless run could be acceptable due to requiring a lot more planning and strategy. Trust me, I have my own issues with this run being published, but none of them are on us as site staff. adelikat was completely in the right to accept this. Judges follow the will of the audience when it comes to entertainment-based decisions. The audience wanted this accepted, so it was accepted. The audience wanted every other published SMB1 run accepted, so they were also accepted. That's the nature of how the site works. The system inherently favors popular games while leaving thousands of others out to dry. Plenty of people check the site every day, plenty of people are active, but almost none of them actually pay attention to every workbench submission. Some submissions are lucky to even get 5 votes. Some don't even get posts in the thread. The oldest submission on the workbench, from January, falls under both of those categories! Ultimately, we can't just ask people to stop being biased towards SMB1, and we can't just reject runs for having "too much SMB1 already" because "too much SMB1" is something that our audience decides in the first place. Feedback (and the general lack thereof for games that aren't about plumbers) is an issue that definitely needs to be addressed, but it needs to be addressed site-wide and not buried deep in a submission thread for a submission that got way more feedback than 6000-7000 others did.
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warmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
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Acumenium wrote:
I gave an RPG scenario just above this quote. Look at it. When the infamous "No Sphere Grid, No Summons, No Customization, No Overdrives" challenge of Final Fantasy X was finally beaten, many had done it with emulators, but those weren't entertaining runs. Everyone knew what it would look like to beat it, it's just that for many years, the RNG never lined up. Save state abuse wouldn't have led to anything entertaining, and even this video would probably be seen as uninteresting to those who aren't interested in low-level challenges or who might be but aren't aware how brutally hard this actually is and how low the chances to win even are.
Acumenium wrote:
If a low-level challenge of an RPG had you able to beat the first boss at level 3 at the earliest, or level 1 with the use of TAS tools like save/load states and so on, a TAS of it isn't very interesting for the purpose of watching someone try to beat it.
I'm looking right at it, and I still don't understand what you're tying to say.
Acumenium wrote:
This fails at being entertaining to anyone wishing to watch the challenge for the minimal A Button aspect due to not being possible to imitate
How do you know this exactly?
Acumenium wrote:
This run is entirely arbitrary. It assigns a "goal" at complete random. Another run for a game that is the first of its kind is going to be rejected on the basis that beating the game-assigned high scores is "arbitrary", but a player-assigned goal with no clear end ("62 A buttons") is somehow acceptable as the umpteenth branch of a game?
Stop repeating this like a mantra. I already explained why it's not arbitrary, you skipped it, I reminded you, you skipped again and now you're repeating it again.
feos wrote:
Acumenium wrote:
That's not the "minimum B presses", it's literally none. This does press A though, and quite a lot. It is the definition of arbitrary.
It presses A as few times as known to be possible, which is what "minimum" means. If 0 is possible, 0 is minimum. When you try to complete a game in minimal time, you don't say "it's not 0 frames therefore it's arbitrary", do you? Because it wouldn't be "movie duration the author arbitrarily picked and decided to stick to", it'd be, once again, known minimum, of time. Same thing with A and B presses in this and in walkathon.
Acumenium wrote:
Board games are typically disallowed here no matter how technically impressive because they're boring.
Where are you even getting this from?
Acumenium wrote:
The argument of claiming it's "akshully superplay not speedrun" and the focus on "why are you so worried about branches?" feels strange when you have asinine cases like #4017 GBC The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (USA v1.0) in 27:55.02 by TwistedTammer obsoleting #1462 GBC The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX (USA v1.0) in 1:00:02.68 by Swordless Link. This causes a bad case where there's no actual full playthrough of Link's Awakening.
This is being discussed where it belongs.
Acumenium wrote:
Does the poll really count when almost every thread features the Judges having to yell at people what the poll even means?
The poll plays a role, the posts play a role, existing precedents play a role, it's a complex task. There's no stat that would allow us to judge things blindly, because if it was possible to approach a creative hobby that way, it would just have been automated instead of getting "peer-reviewed".
Acumenium wrote:
The issue is that challenges are supposed to be relatable
Who told you that? You keep saying that being superhuman is a bad thing for a TAS, this is nonsense. It's the very point of TASing. TASing exists in the first place exactly because it was obviously superhuman and that was what entertained its audience.
Acumenium wrote:
Right now, it's not a challenge, because it's a TAS, there's no such thing as difficulty.
This is even more ridiculous. If it's not a difficult task to minimize the A presses, just go ahead and improve this movie. Either by time or by having less A presses. Of course there's a lot of difficulty involved in TASing. Just like there's a lot of difficulty involved in programming, chess, art, science, or any other job where you have the tools and the time, but you have to be very creative and precise.
Acumenium wrote:
"Superplay" also feels subjective.
It's meant to be subjective. It's why we have the voting system: people share their feelings.
Acumenium wrote:
Visually, nothing is impressive at all about this run. The player gets stuck in the ground for minutes at a time, waits for a turtle to waddle, hits it to go up a bit, repeat, so on. That's not visually impressive.
We've heard you. You didn't enjoy it. It's okay, everyone can't enjoy every movie. We publish to Moons what majority would (and did) enjoy. There's no point in fighting against this movie's existence, because no matter how far you go with that, it's still in the minority.
Acumenium wrote:
Is it technically impressive? Yes. So would a great many "boring" board games. But 99% of people watching this are not going to be realizing why it is technically impressive.
Are you reading their minds or something? How do you know their opinions without them speaking up, and even with this precision?
Acumenium wrote:
My biggest problem with this movie was knowing it'd get published as it represents incredibly bad problems with the publication system here. - Super Mario Bros. runs are frequently turned down due to being "hard to accept". This doesn't seem to be particularly true. The issue is I've seen this as a rejection reason for additional runs of other games, or for "arbitrary goals" like not taking damage at all.
Examples?
Acumenium wrote:
It was recently said a new non-Kaizo ROM hack of Super Mario Bros. 3 would obsolete Mario Adventure if accepted---why? What would it even have in common with it?
Quote?
Acumenium wrote:
- Runs with very little original gameplay obsolete full game runs instead of existing concurrent as a different branch because "we have too many branches", said by Judges who accept the seventh Super Mario Bros. entry.
Quote?
Acumenium wrote:
Or Mega Man. There's no zipless runs of any of the games to feature zipping glitches, and I'm not really sure why.
[4057] NES Mega Man 2 "zipless" by warmCabin in 27:16.17 [1937] Genesis Sonic the Hedgehog "no zips" by Aglar in 17:36.58 Was there an optimized "zipless" submission that was rejected? Or a forum post from judges where they're telling people not to make it?
Acumenium wrote:
- Categorizing runs is "too difficult" because glitches "are arbitrary", as a run is accepted with an arbitrary and non-definite goal like "don't press A very much".
You're completely making this up now, and you're repeating the point that has been disproved long ago, fighting a strawman for good measure.
Acumenium wrote:
I have unironically seen "zipless" runs be considered "arbitrary and will be rejected if submitted" here.
Quote?
Acumenium wrote:
tl;dr: In a vacuum, this run doesn't have an issue. It isn't very interesting to me but it doesn't have to be. It being accepted represents serious flaws in the publishing system as a whole. It should've been immediately rejected given what many other runs and branches have to put up with, but it wasn't. It was rather accepted for every reason those types of runs are rejected.
Yeah. It's impossible to discuss without links and quotes.
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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I think a distinction could be made between "goal" and "restriction". A goal tries to achieve or reach something in the game. A restriction is a self-imposed (rather than game-imposed) rule making achieving that thing harder. The restriction in itself is not something to he achieved or reached in the game. "Any% completion" is a goal: Complete the game as fast as possible with no or only reasonable restrictions (such as no cheat codes). "100% completion" is a goal. Or rather, two goals. Primary goal: Achieve what can be classified as "collect everything" in a particular game. Secondary goal: Do that while completing the game as fast as possible. "Maximum score" is likewise a goal (usually with the implied secondary goal of achieving it as fast as possible). "No B button" is a restriction: The goal is to reach the end of the game as fast as possible, but a self-imposed restriction is imposed to make achieving that goal more difficult. (Not pressing the B button is not a goal itself, because it's not something that you achieve or reach in-game, or enticed in any way by the game.) Other categories can be fuzzier in whether they are "goals" or "restrictions". For example using an alternate (slower) route could be said to be a goal (because it's something that you aim to reach in-game, just like "100%"). Using an alternate (slower) character could be classified as either (you could see it as reaching game completion with that character, of you could see it as a self-imposed restriction to make the actual goal harder). I think that "arbitrariness" can also be classified into two: Arbitrary goals and arbitrary restrictions. Whether a goal or restriction is "arbitrary" is subjective, but I would say that most often arbitrary goals usually feel "less arbitrary" than arbitrary restrictions. After all, a goal is a goal, something that you can achieve or reach in-game. A restriction is self-imposed, not something imposed by the game itself, and therefore more up to one's own opinion and taste. "Arbitrariness" is often something that's very game-specific, and/or has no rhyme or reason (for example "collect 15 coins" in a game with hundreds of coins, and where there's absolutely nothing special or particular about collecting precisely 15 of them, and it would make no difference whether it would be 14, 16, or 27.) That's not to say that all game-specific goals or restrictions are arbitrary, but arbitrary goals and restrictions often tend to be. Ultimately it's up to subjective opinion what is "arbitrary" and what isn't, and how much.
adelikat
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I'm going to ignore most of the walls of text above and just focus on a point. That we have a lot of SMB branches and not others. If there is any precedent I hope this publication accomplishes is to move away from a "too many branches" mentality. Having said that, we need to have criteria, which was laid out here. 1) Entertaining (with a super majority audience acceptance %) 2) Not-redundant to other branches by having different gameplay or tricks or glitches. Must be clear to a non-expert of the game (this is my problem with Super Metroid branches, the routing is very different, but if you don't know the game, it is hard to see) 3) Be technically impressive, ideally in a way that stands out from other branches. As long as each publication meets these criteria, I don't care how many branches a game has.
Or Mega Man. There's no zipless runs of any of the games to feature zipping glitches, and I'm not really sure why.
This is a curious example to bring up. As such a publication would easily be accepted here. If we don't have one, it is because someone hasn't made one. We can't control who makes what.
It's hard to look this good. My TAS projects
Acumenium
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adelikat wrote:
I'm going to ignore most of the walls of text above and just focus on a point. That we have a lot of SMB branches and not others. If there is any precedent I hope this publication accomplishes is to move away from a "too many branches" mentality. Having said that, we need to have criteria, which was laid out here. 1) Entertaining (with a super majority audience acceptance %) 2) Not-redundant to other branches by having different gameplay or tricks or glitches. Must be clear to a non-expert of the game (this is my problem with Super Metroid branches, the routing is very different, but if you don't know the game, it is hard to see) 3) Be technically impressive, ideally in a way that stands out from other branches. As long as each publication meets these criteria, I don't care how many branches a game has.
Or Mega Man. There's no zipless runs of any of the games to feature zipping glitches, and I'm not really sure why.
This is a curious example to bring up. As such a publication would easily be accepted here. If we don't have one, it is because someone hasn't made one. We can't control who makes what.
Then we must make sure that for all movies, even ROM hacks, "too many branches" is never something we utter. I'm also glad you agree with me about [1462] GBC The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX by SwordlessLink in 1:00:02.68 (does not go out of bounds) being unobsoleted from [4017] GBC The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening DX by TwistedTammer in 27:55.02 (goes out of bounds regularly). 1) This would make sense if there was any rhyme or reason to it. It has a lot of "Yes" votes and almost every comment in this thread is either from me or people defending the run's right to (co)exist rather than anything about it. > "As a general rule, I'm only confident on a Moon tier/hack acceptance decision if there's a fairly high number of votes (10+, ideally 15+), if the ratio is around 80-85% at minimum, and if there's a good number of posts in the thread that in and of themselves are confidently entertained without needing to add modifiers as to why they voted Yes." > "and accepting all hacks is a surefire way to kill the audience by repetition" We have no actual guidelines on what is consistent with audience engagement, just suggestions. And there's a lot of votes here with almost no engagement. 2) It visits, I believe, one more screen, than the run with warps. Otherwise, it goes through every single level that one does, but at less than half the speed. The "method" used to do so is different, yes, but entirely arbitrary, and mostly filled with massive amounts of waiting in the floor. 3) It only stands out to anyone who has tried this. 99% of people watching will not have and it's not a relatable goal either like "wow I was level 5 when I beat that boss and it was hard but you did it at level 3???" that players could see without having tried. Or "wow that jump in 8-4 is so hard and you did it without running?". Hell, I wouldn't even be as accepting of the walkathon run as I am if it wasn't for the fact that it was also warpless. It showed off far more of the game than any other run and did truly make itself different from the warps run. This run goes through the same exact levels and only visits one different screen, which I didn't even notice since it was just a "press right" screen that contributed nothing of value to the viewer. After reading about it, yes, this run is technically impressive. To the average viewer, it is not apparent why, however. I would also like to quote Samsara again for the people who couldn't understand what I was talking about with personal challenges/imposed restrictions not being as interesting in a TAS setting: The run's very well done, but I don't personally find any entertainment in watching TASes of hacks meant specifically for RTA frustration. I would also like to say to Warp that your post was very well-wrote and describes much of what I've been trying to talk about very well. Thank you.
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Acumenium wrote:
I'm not sure why this is so hard to understand. Right now, it's not a challenge, because it's a TAS, there's no such thing as difficulty. At the same time, the goal is bleakly arbitrary. This isn't relatable. The last sentence is also hypocritical. If I have no right to an opinion or right to express it, neither do you. You're accusing me of a bigger podium than I have by doing the same thing you are accusing me of.
It's hard to understand because you say things like "But this isn't even a TAS" and then "because it's a TAS". In any case, I don't really see hypocrisy in what I said. Whether or not something is a TAS, insofar as it can be considered publishable on TASvideos, is decided by the community (or at least by the judges). I wouldn't claim that a movie shouldn't be published because it isn't a TAS unless I were confident that my saying so is consistent with the community's standard of what a TAS is. I think I've already explained why I'm not impressed by the word 'arbitrary'. As for relatability, I personally think most of the ACE movies are extremely unrelatable and uninteresting, but I think they deserve to be published.
Acumenium wrote:
tl;dr: In a vacuum, this run doesn't have an issue. It isn't very interesting to me but it doesn't have to be. It being accepted represents serious flaws in the publishing system as a whole. It should've been immediately rejected given what many other runs and branches have to put up with, but it wasn't. It was rather accepted for every reason those types of runs are rejected.
Perhaps this what really mattered to you all along. I only initially responded because I felt comments about how this movie isn't a TAS or is arbitrary/unrelatable were unfair when discussing this run in isolation. I won't comment on broader points about the site's publication system because I don't really have an opinion on it (I'm more of a casual viewer these days), but you should certainly bring it up in the appropriate place if you have an problem with it.
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Acumenium, it occurs to me that you have strong opinions about things. That is perfectly fine. And you're also being passionate about delivering your opinions, trying to see it through that they are taken to heart. That is also fine—but only to a point where two conditions are met. 1. Your argumentation is based on concepts you understand well, can formulate well, and are able to present in a constructive manner. It doesn't seem to be the case on your end because you're frequently seen making erroneous assumptions about how the site works, but luckily this is something we can fix. We're there for you to answer questions, and staff members like Samsara, feos, and adelikat have already spent quite a bit of time explaining things to you specifically. In this context we only ask you to do the whole thing correctly, adhering to the most basic unspoken rules of forum communication: if you're unhappy with something, make a thread in the appropriate section of the forum or find an existing one if there is, present your case, tell us why you think we're doing things wrong, offer a solution that you think would improve the situation, and listen to feedback. It makes things easier for everyone. 2. You are not being rude or disruptive in your attempts to make things right with the world (metaphorically speaking). This is more problematic, however, because right now you're tiptoeing the line of being passionate enough to lose track that you are, in fact, upsetting people with your combative behavior and lack of self-reflection. That's not a great direction to go in your life as a forum member because unless you realize it and change your conduct, it eventually leads to a ban. Might as well attempt to change the course early and not let it reach the point where it makes you and possibly other people miserable and forced into heavy decisions. At this point we have heard your take on this submission, it was gauged against the positive feedback, and a decision was made in favor of the latter. In this respect, any further discussion on the site's publishing system, goal choices, arbitrariness, and so on will have to be continued in a separate thread, should you decide to keep discussing the subject. But please follow the two conditions I've outlined above so that it doesn't devolve into pointless bickering. This goes to everyone else as well. This is a thread for a published movie, any further posts not specific to the movie in question will be removed from the thread. Thank you.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
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I feel if we call the branch label "minimum jumps" it would be neater and more informative at the same time, while still being accurate. Sorry it took me so long to raise this question, but what does everyone think?
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.
DrD2k9
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feos wrote:
I feel if we call the branch label "minimum jumps" it would be neater and more informative at the same time, while still being accurate. Sorry it took me so long to raise this question, but what does everyone think?
Objectively, "Minimum A Presses" and "Minimum Jumps" are not guaranteed to always be equivalent (though they may be in this case, I haven't looked that closely at the input to confirm). Further, a "Minimum A Frames" run could be another potential variant between two runs with otherwise equal number of A button presses. Or, in theory, it may be possible to have a run with a greater total number of A button presses yet presenting a lower total number of frames with A being pressed. My opinion on this submission/publicaiton: I agree that "Minimum Jumps" is more readily understandable as what to expect when watching this run. As this run currently is BOTH the known "Minimum A Presses" and "Minimum Jumps", either branch name would be valid. I'm going to make an assumption (because I'm too lazy to go count A frames) that this submission also likely qualifies as "Minimum A Frames." If someone someday manages to make an acceptable TAS where at least one of the 3 minimums is present, but not all 3; we may need to consider rebranching as appropriate.
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Minimum A frames is not the goal here, we even have a rejected submission with A frames an order of magnitude fewer than this run.
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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DrD2k9 wrote:
I agree that "Minimum Jumps" is more readily understandable as what to expect when watching this run.
I agree as well. Personally speaking, I prefer branches that are about in-character actions (e.g. "no killing", "no using the sword", etc) over branches about out-of-character mechanical things (e.g. "no using the mouse wheel").