Well, be glad I can't get promoted any further, because this is the second and last time I get promoted and then immediately stress test the system.
Game objectives
Emulator used: BizHawk 2.9
Colors a dinosaur
Comments
Well, yeah, you're seeing this correctly. Color a Dinosaur as a submission that could be taken as "legitimate". Is it? I dunno, I'm only an administrator of this Web Site and the primary point of contact for matters regarding what is and isn't acceptable. What do I know? God, I wish that was sarcasm.
Inspired by internal discussion of #8191: warmCabin's NES Color a Dinosaur "four color theorem" in 08:11.72, and at the incredible persistence of Samsara, we attempted to figure out a standard ruleset for the ultimate TASVideos meme. As a result of that discussion, I decided to make and submit these runs as a way of taking the discussion directly to the community in the most blunt way possible. By the way, you're damn right I copy-pasted this submission text over to the other run with only minor changes!
I'm going to try and make a case for these runs, because I don't think there's a single thing about them that isn't "controversial" in some way, meaning there's a possibility that I will be cancelled over Color a Dinosaur.
The Game
Is Color a Dinosaur a video game by our definition?
A video game is audio/visual. It presents its content on some electronic device in audio and/or video form.
A video game is interactive. It requires repeated user input to progress.
A video game poses a virtual task. It requires the player to accomplish some in-game job.
User input is transformative. Which set of suggested in-game choices you make determines optimality level of your play.
A video game is finite. It has an objective end point, or a community vetted one.
This is definitely an audiovisual experience in that it has both audio and visuals, there's an interactive element in that it receives, process, and requires user input, the virtual task is quite literally the name of the video game, input is transformative and gameplay can be optimized since certain colors take longer to fill in than others, and even if there's technically no objective endpoint the community can always figure one out.
I think it counts, miraculously.
The categories
I've submitted an any% and a 100% run. Any% colors the fastest dinosaur, while 100% colors all 16 dinosaurs. One of our discussion points was over whether or not any% can even be achieved in a game that has no ending. Personally, I think any% serves a secondary optimization challenge in finding the fastest dinosaur to color, so I think it can stand on its own. 100% should be acceptable either way, in theory.
The, um... "Coloring"
This is where I expect things to fall apart for these runs.
Here's a sentence that, surprisingly, I am not shocked to be typing, but only because it is not the first time I have done so: How do we define coloring? If we all agree that the goal of speedrunning Color a Dinosaur is to, well, color a dinosaur as fast as possible, then we need to define coloring. There are three ways of going about this, from my testing:
Actually coloring the dinosaur
Everything starts out white, so for the dinosaur to be considered colored, the player needs to actively add non-white to the dinosaur in order to consider it colored. This is extremely time-consuming, so...
Coloring the dinosaur the same color it already is
This game offers 4 color palettes (8 if you count the duplicates where some colors are obnoxiously flashing), and the third color in each of those palettes is the default color that everything uses when a dinosaur is dino-selected. If you try and paint over a section that's already the color you're trying to use, the game will audibly recognize that you are trying to do so, meaning you are essentially applying a new coat of color to your dinosaur.
Counting any change of color no matter how it's achieved
Switching off of the starting palette changes the default color off of white, essentially "coloring" everything on screen in one smooth move:
So that leaves us with the question of whether or not this actually counts as coloring the dinosaur. Color is being brought to the dinosaur, yes, but are we coloring it, actively? Or are we merely altering our perception of the dinosaur? Am I really, unironically, getting this philosophical on a tool-assisted speedrun videos dot org submission? The answer to at least one of those questions is yes!
Final thoughts
Yeah, I have no idea what's going to happen here. There's, weirdly, a lot to consider for a game that we initially thought could never be published, and I could see any decision being made at any point in the discussion because of that. Hopefully we come to a conclusive one. As a family. A family of colored dinosaurs.
Samsara: Judging from the comments in the thread, it seems people favor the "100%" submission actually being considered any% for the game, so I'm updating the branch on this submission, cancelling it, and removing the branch on the other submission. No, I'm not confused by my own series of actions, what are you talking about?
If this gets published, all I'm thinking of is, how many similar flash games like this are there, and can we have a site event where we just completely flood the submission queue with them? I don't think 2 submissions of a single game can properly stress test the system. Maybe for next April Fools everyone submits a run of games similar to this, all at once, to see if the staff can handle it?
Joined: 8/7/2021
Posts: 92
Location: Southern England
I'd like to add a comedic tone to this post but I don't seem to have that ability so here are my thoughts on this incredibly important matter:
So, I do think that this game does deserve a publication, after all it does fit all the requirements for a publishable game now (somehow). However, the only only issue I do have is what the publishable branch is, as I don't think any% and 100% can both exist. For me, any% is defined as beating the game which is no surprise. But 'beating the game' usually means getting to an endpoint where completing any more of the game requires backtracking and going back before the endpoint unless there is a post-game section which I guess the other 15 dinosaurs could be defined as. Unless the branch name is redone to 'one dinosaur', I could see this as publishable but it's a bit of an arbitrary goal.
Colouring all dinosaurs, on the other hand fits my definition of any% as the game has been beaten and playing any more of it requires backtracking and recolouring the dinosaurs. Overall, I think it's indisputable that this legendary game can finally be published, it's just how branches are managed which are more about personal perception, at least that's what it feels like to me.
Disclaimer: I didn't intend this post to be so critical and long, but this submission happened to unpack a lot of things that we haven't discussed before. It's not aimed at anyone, it just ponders a few new theses.
This was my main question with this game:
Wiki: Glossary#VideoGame wrote:
A video game poses a virtual task. It requires the player to accomplish some in-game job.
so I was curious how it's resolved in the submission, and the solution is
the virtual task is quite literally the name of the video game
While I can definitely see how this game does its best to suggest a task to the player, the secondary sentence of the definition (meant to elaborate on the first one) says "It requires the player to accomplish some in-game job" and I can't agree that there are any kinds of requirements in this game whatsoever.
It gives you some tools to use, and then basically leaves you on your own. You can invent indefinite number of your own goals and definitions, and the game won't object, its tools will just retain their limits.
The game does nothing to tell you what is considered actually coloring a dinosaur, and there's no explanation of what isn't. So players are on their own here, and we can already see how we can define it in several relatively natural ways. Now if we consider that TASing it about pushing games to their limits, beyond natural limitations, it would be strange to stop on what feels obvious to us after having read the title of the game. Why limit ourselves (and our creativity) with how real world is organized? We don't emulate the real world and we can't TAS it, not even as a part of a videogame. So why do we need to rely on English language when determining in-game actions?
This goes further.
We rely on English language literally when we interpret the game title as the only objective of the game. Then we vaguely rely on it and vaguely reinvent it when determining what should be considered coloring. And then we refuse to rely on it when deciding that coloring a dinosaur is objectively the requirement of this game. And we outright contradict English language if we say that whatever community is going to agree on, is objectively the goal of the game.
The only objective reality with video games is in-game reality. All the rest is human's subjective convention.
Okay so subjective human convention is not something bad in its nature. We still need to achieve community agreement on major subjects like policies, or on subjectivity-based movie goals when deciding whether a playaround is entertaining. We encourage subjective feedback on movies in general, and we work with that data as an objective fact. But we should not use community agreement as a substitution for an objective fact. We should not operate in a paradigm like "if enough people consider this color blue, then it's objectively blue".
Even if we wanted, we do not have reliable sample size here. And we don't even have a consensus yet, and I'm not looking forward to a consensus picking from several logically equivalent options.
White is definitely a color, and the game allows you to color everything white. But do we agree that the goal if the game is us coloring everything white? Of course not. The goal of the game is, maybe, us coloring everything in some way.
But on the other hand, can we agree that us changing absolutely nothing is the goal of the game? I don't think so. The game's documentation goes out of its way to show us example pictures where dinosaurs are colored by applying different colors to them. It even has all those different colors available! Of course the game's goal is that we use those colors! But this is when we decide that we're too creative to care about the game's expectations, and we ignore them by not changing anything in the game. Yet we care about its title's wording and use it as a command. Sounds inconsistent.
If somehow we reach an agreement on what is objectively the required goal of this game, I have another problem. For games without an ending we have this set of acceptable end points:
Wiki: MovieRules#MovieMustBeComplete wrote:
If there's no clear ending, end after completing the first full game loop. However you may play further and end after any of the following:
All unique content (enemies, level layouts, game mechanics, etc.) is exhausted and completed.
The loop with the hardest in-game difficulty (enemy speed, AI, etc.) is completed.
In games with a score counter, you may end when you reach the maximum score the game allows.
This run doesn't aim for maximum score, it doesn't complete the hardest difficulty loop, it doesn't exhaust all unique content, and I'm afraid it doesn't even complete the first full game loop. It completes essentially a single optional level and stops there. I can't agree that every dinosaur is a full game loop. And neither of them is the first one, they are all optional. So at the very least all unique content should be exhausted and completed, which is what #8258: Samsara's NES Color a Dinosaur in 02:07.46 does, and like MarioAtWork, that other submission is the one I'd consider a fastest completion of this game, if it has any.
If this game ends up fitting our definition of a video game, then I don't think it will be our current definition. It will have to be changed to fit this game. And of course it's not a problem in itself, because we can't predict everything. And we only evolve if we're ready to change.
But when a definition has to be changed to the opposite of the one we agreed on as a community... then why do we even need definitions? If the goal is tweaking them in a way that everything ends up fitting, why have community discussions on where to put a limit?
Photoshop is a game. It gives you tools and the goal is that you use its title as a command. You just have to photoshop. Once you've photoshopped, you've completed the game. Can we have a community consensus on this one please? Wait we first need a community agreement on what is considered actually photoshopping...
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 think this game neither rewards you for doing something right, nor punishes you for doing something wrong. It therefore, as Feos said, does not require you to do anything at all, let alone accomplish something. I also think this game, because it does not acknowledge success or failure, does not really have an end point. It's impossible to speedrun a sandbox; you can only speedrun a game you made up yourself in it, such as the 4-colour a dinosaur submission does.
