Joined: 11/13/2006
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Memory wrote:
So there has been a major change to game entries where instead of having a system tied to the game entry, it is tied to an individual game version. Therefore game entries can have multiple systems listed and have proper cross-system obsoletion. There is also now an admin only operation to rewire existing game pages together.
In my opinion, it makes sense to have game entries shared whenever gameplay is extremely similar, and cross obsoletion can occur. Pokemon versions (Red/Green/Blue/Yellow for example) and various modern operating systems are cases of this. What is not a case is say a GameBoy Advance game and a GameCube game based on the same license with the same title. These are likely to be two completely different games.
My goal long-term is to have people navigate the site largely through game pages, so I'm itching to get started. But if there's any adjustments that make sense, post them.
EDIT: Another potential example would be Lion King SNES vs Genesis. While traditionally cross system obsoletion has not occurred for those games, I feel they are similar enough that people searching for the game are likely to want to see either if not both.
As far as I'm concerned, if the games are meant to be the same (i.e, Pokemon RGBY/other sets of generations) or extremely similar (i.e, Lion King SNES/Genesis, Myst, the big collection of Donkey Kong ports), they should share game pages.
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.
So I used the game rewiring feature on Windows and Linux VVVVVV and the two are now one game entry. I deleted the previous entry for Linux VVVVVV after removing all genres. What I didn't realize is that there doesn't appear to be any public logs for either rewiring games or deleting them. Obviously there's still the server logs but I would prefer public accountability, especially when acting on the scale that I plan to. As such I'll hold off on further rewiring until logs exist.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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The new approach looks good, as well as the direction we're taking!
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 agree, looks good and makes sense for very similar ports to share a game page!
Memory wrote:
I'm not opposed to asking for the abbreviations field to be changed or removed if people don't see much value in it. I'm not sure if it's used in anything in the site code.
Abbreviations appear in TASVideos search results. A couple weeks ago, I searched the site for "OoT", the common fan abbreviation for Ocarina of Time. There were no results, so I changed the abbreviation field to OoT, and now the game appears in that search.
Conversely, the YouTube tags field, including the less commonly used but still tagged "LoZOoT", doesn't return any game results in our site search. We should link that field to our search, so we can have alternate titles (i.e. Probotector), and game titles in Japanese, Cyrillic and other alphabets searchable for non-English speaking users.
And I'm also curious about this:
feos wrote:
The old site kept lots of Relations info. Was it dropped upon migration or is it still kept hidden?
Are there any good reasons to separate game entries of fighting game revisions ie Street Fighter II, Super Street Fighter II, Super Street Fighter II Turbo? I'm honestly leaning towards no since cross game obsoletion has already happened and honestly people are probably going to search for Street Fighter II and not look for specific revisions.
EDIT: I'm leaning towards keeping Rainbow Edition separate since it's unofficial, however.
EDIT2: To clarify, this isn't to imply that different revisions can't have separate tases, just that they should be found in the same game listing.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
I'm leaning towards keeping Rainbow Edition separate since it's unofficial, however.
We have "Super Duper Mario Bros. (Unapproved Graphics Hack)" listed in Super Mario Bros. though.
Yeah this is a point against having Rainbow Edition separate. It really isn't that big of a change, but I almost feel you're unlikely to search for it under Street Fighter II? Maybe? I dunno.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
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Fortranm wrote:
Memory wrote:
I'm leaning towards keeping Rainbow Edition separate since it's unofficial, however.
We have "Super Duper Mario Bros. (Unapproved Graphics Hack)" listed in Super Mario Bros. though.
That's just a ROM catalog, it's a hack that just changes graphics, so it's listed a version instead of a seperate game. I am not familiar with Rainbow Editon but if it has something more than cosmetic changes then it's not exactly the same.
I'm leaning towards keeping Rainbow Edition separate since it's unofficial, however.
We have "Super Duper Mario Bros. (Unapproved Graphics Hack)" listed in Super Mario Bros. though.
That's just a ROM catalog, it's a hack that just changes graphics, so it's listed a version instead of a seperate game. I am not familiar with Rainbow Editon but if it has something more than cosmetic changes then it's not exactly the same.
Rainbow edition is some gameplay tweaks rather than completely original content. I've rewired versions with more than just mere cosmetic differences.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Since I realized that one can add multiple game groups to a game, and a more direct way of indicating a relationship between two game entries was unlikely to be built any time soon, I decided that a good way to link hacks/level packs/etc. to the original game would be game groups. An example can be found on the Super Mario World game entry. There is a link to a Super Mario World hacks game group where one can find hacks of that game.
EDIT: This will provide a means of hosting more hacks without them being lost or without worrying about cluttering system lists.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Making a new post for this rewire request because it's slightly less ordinary.
Quoting myself from Post #511329 and Post #511406:
But then there is the question of whether the release of the first game on Genesis (localized as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine) is similar enough to the SNES version for cross obsoletion, maybe.
Kirby's Avalanche and Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machin have the same number of stages as we see in the movies. I'm not sure if this counts as apparently identical gameplay.
Of course, this is on the basis of them being localizations of releases of the same base game.
Either Kirby's Avalanche or Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine should be renamed to just Puyo Puyo with the other one rewired to it. It might even be reasonable to make them cross-obsolete each other since they are ports of the same base game reskinned to different themes only for localization purposes.
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Read the posts below yours.
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 did but that has little to do with this proposal. That was about the differences between the first game and the second game in the series, not comparing different ports and localization of the first game.
I was uploading a movie file but couldn't find this game.
...
Could this be added ?
I think we could add games on request, if it would help organize the site. Others can weigh in, though.
For now, I added an entry for VCop2.
Also, for Saturn, do we add hashes for each file in the archive (this one has 44), or generate a hash of all of them together somehow (like as a .zip)?
Since there was discussion about Youtube Tags, I thought I'd mention something.
Over the years the tags themselves became less and less important. Not only were the tags eventually hidden for viewers (they used to be displayed under the description). But now the tags are also hidden for uploaders, so you have to actually search for them in the UI if you want to add them.
Youtube itself wrote:
Tags can be useful if the content of your video is commonly misspelled. Otherwise, tags play a minimal role in your video's discovery.
I'd not be surprised if Youtube decided to remove tags completely.
So in terms of discussions, it's worth considering removing the tags field entirely, and instead rethink their purpose and the approach to be taken here.
Warning: Might glitch to creditsI will finish this ACE soon as possible
(or will I?)
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I agree with Masterjun that we should just remove youtube tags on games. They don't add enough value to be worth maintaining for the reasons mentioned and also because I question if we can even do a good job adding useful tags by game without an organized effort and a big picture view.
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Memory wrote:
Should we consider retooling the "YT Tags" field to be a more generic "Search terms" field? Like a lot of this I feel could be applied towards other sorts of searches, ie, the site itself. Not sure if it's being used in the site search atm.
To expand on this, here's my Discord quotes from April:
Tags are not necessarily only for youtube. We can connect them to search queries, for example if someone searches for SMB. Also the good thing about them is we can put normalized ASCII names in there (and we do I think?) so you don't have to copypaste non-ASCII to find a game.
And people suggested putting the original game name somewhere if it's not ASCII.
Also for games that have an iconic abbreviation, it could be put there, instead of having a dedicated field for it even tho abbreviations are meaningless for... most a whole bunch games?
So if it doesn't make sense to keep sending tags to youtube, I don't mind stopping doing that. But there's definitely a lot of useful info to put into those tags instead for our own search use.
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 wouldn't want the column to be misnamed. How about we copy all the data from youtube tags into search keys, keep search keys, and then remove youtube tags (and the use of them in the youtube integration)
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adelikat wrote:
I wouldn't want the column to be misnamed. How about we copy all the data from youtube tags into search keys, keep search keys, and then remove youtube tags (and the use of them in the youtube integration)
I like it.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
Emulator Coder, Site Developer, Site Owner, Expert player
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So, I made some significant updates to the Game system.
1) Game abbreviations are increased from 8 to 24 characters. I also enforced them to be unique. I fixed all duplicate keys, mostly by adding the system if it made sense.
2) Youtube tags are now aliases. However, we need to do significant work here. We need to only have values that make sense as aliases, and remove the display name as that is redundant. Also the search is sophisticated to do punctuation variations, so we need to go through and clean those out too
3) I made abbreviations not required. I found that the abbreviations are problematic. Currently they are used to make friendly urls. You can go /Games/smb and it will link to super mario bros due to the abbreviation. I think maybe we should remove MOST abbreviations however, as there are not intuitive abbreviations for the game.
Hey so I was searching through all the movies on the site one by one, 614M is fine, 615M is fine. But 616M displays an error page? Was there once a TAS on this page and it got overwritten? Or is there something really obvious I'm missing? (Because that's usually how it goes)
Hey so I was searching through all the movies on the site one by one, 614M is fine, 615M is fine. But 616M displays an error page? Was there once a TAS on this page and it got overwritten? Or is there something really obvious I'm missing? (Because that's usually how it goes)
A lot of movies in that range do not exist for arbitrary reasons. There was never a tas on those pages.
[16:36:31] <Mothrayas> I have to say this argument about robot drug usage is a lot more fun than whatever else we have been doing in the past two+ hours
[16:08:10] <BenLubar> a TAS is just the limit of a segmented speedrun as the segment length approaches zero
Hey so I was searching through all the movies on the site one by one, 614M is fine, 615M is fine. But 616M displays an error page? Was there once a TAS on this page and it got overwritten? Or is there something really obvious I'm missing? (Because that's usually how it goes)
A lot of movies in that range do not exist for arbitrary reasons. There was never a tas on those pages.
One of the things that happened was that publications could fail for various technical reasons after having already reserved their ID. This would cause that ID to be lost. I believe 1987-1989 were lost to this.
