The "glitchless" category is somewhat standard among humans, because it resembles regular play the most, and it's not too hard to agree on what is considered a glitch. While there can be potential issues with coming up with an absolutely objective definition of a glitch, we don't have to be absolutely objective at all times, we just need a definition to make sense for the people involved. That in turn is achieved not by asking literally everyone and blindly relying on their opinions, but by resolving real concerns people may have.
For some games, the RTA community has already come up with a list of glitchesbanned in the glitchless category. But what are potential problems for games where we may try to invent this category from scratch? Do we even need any kind of future proof terms for this?
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.
Interesting question. You have a game, but how would a glitchless category be defined? For me glitches are unintended game behavior, but to others it may be coding errors. So on the face of it defining a glitchless category will be contentious. Ex: for me out of bounds will always be a glitch even though that is in the glitchless category on src for that zelda game you linked. But...certain things should be banned from Glitchless like player intended memory corruption, and in my opinion OOB. Might be good to make a list of usually banned glitches to use to compare to a tas that is claiming to be glitchless.
Putting it here for a record:
In general, I'm mostly for allowing "Glitchless" in standard class as those types of runs would be the theoretical fastest ways of completing the game while still staying within the 'rules' of the game (or what some may refer to as developer intent, which can also be sometimes hard to define/determine). But that's not the main thought for this post...
Regarding defining "Glitchless" :
Consider that some people feel that actions like wall jumping and clipping through walls (as in SMB1 & SMB3) should be considered glitches as opposed to simply being considered optimized use of normal game mechanics.
Unfortunately, I think we may struggle to come up with a standardized definition for "Glitchless," even as a baseline definition that could then be tweaked on a game-by-game basis. This may simply be a situation where each game requires it's own unique definition.
That's the thing, if it's not feasible to generalize reliably, we should work with variety, and with what makes sense for a particular game, without automatic extrapolation.
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.
My only issue with making it standard is not every game has their entire speedrun changed just because they don’t go for glitches. If a speedrun for a game happens to be purely glitchless, but has one glitch that saves like 2 seconds (in say a 20 minute run), then would it make sense to have both a normal TAS and a glitchless TAS where the only difference is that one rather insignificant change?
For games like Ocarina of Time that are very notorious for their game breaking glitches that completely break the game, doing glitches is an entirely different experience all together. But not all games are like this, and honestly they should be judged on a case by case basis for alternative.
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My only issue with making it standard is not every game has their entire speedrun changed just because they don’t go for glitches. If a speedrun for a game happens to be purely glitchless, but has one glitch that saves like 2 seconds (in say a 20 minute run), then would it make sense to have both a normal TAS and a glitchless TAS where the only difference is that one rather insignificant change?
For games like Ocarina of Time that are very notorious for their game breaking glitches that completely break the game, doing glitches is an entirely different experience all together. But not all games are like this, and honestly they should be judged on a case by case basis for alternative.
I can see how this would be a concern.
Perhaps we need to establish some degree of difference between glitched/glitchless branches to allow both in standard class. But even this would likely be a game-by-game decision. I agree that it seems odd to have two nearly identical runs side by side in standard just because one uses a glitch that saves a tiny fraction of the overall run time.
That said, I don't like the idea that a truly glitchess run of a game would never have a chance to be published simply for that reason. Thus, my only issue with "Glitchless" being restricted to the alternative class is the entertainment requirements. I feel there is value in publishing the fastest 'regular' or non-glitched gameplay for nearly any game that we'd have a glitched run published. Basically, I don't want a good potential run (especially one significantly different than a glitched run) to be rejected only because it's not considered widely entertaining.
So perhaps we could compromise and keep "Glitchless" branches as being published into the Aternative class, but make an exception rule that "Glitchless" runs aren't held to the entertainment requirements that other Alternative class goals would require. This would make "Glitchless" branches more of a pseudo-standard situation; where acceptance would strictly based on obeying the movie rules sans glitches, while still having the actual publication being listed with all other Alternative goal runs.
EDIT: I realize that the compromise proposal above could open the flood gates to a bunch of submissions of games currently published with glitches but not glitchless.
My only issue with making it standard is not every game has their entire speedrun changed just because they don’t go for glitches. If a speedrun for a game happens to be purely glitchless, but has one glitch that saves like 2 seconds (in say a 20 minute run), then would it make sense to have both a normal TAS and a glitchless TAS where the only difference is that one rather insignificant change?
Doesn't that mean that we're letting the game shine through whatever extremes it allows for? In some games the use of glitches is the only thing you can minimize or maximize, and we would be highlighting those differences officially, rather then requiring it to be entertaining.
DrD2k9 wrote:
Perhaps we need to establish some degree of difference between glitched/glitchless branches to allow both in standard class.
I think it would make it more subjective, because when it comes to the "x enough or not" arguments, there appears the need for something else objective that we could rely on, to then decide whether the difference is subjectively big enough or not. But why add this extra ambiguity?
DrD2k9 wrote:
I agree that it seems odd to have two nearly identical runs side by side in standard just because one uses a glitch that saves a tiny fraction of the overall run time.
Why?
DrD2k9 wrote:
So perhaps we could compromise and keep "Glitchless" branches as being published into the Aternative class, but make an exception rule that "Glitchless" runs aren't held to the entertainment requirements that other Alternative class goals would require. This would make "Glitchless" branches more of a pseudo-standard situation; where acceptance would strictly based on obeying the movie rules sans glitches, while still having the actual publication being listed with all other Alternative goal runs.
Which problems does that solve that appear if it's just a standard goal?
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.
Doesn't that mean that we're letting the game shine through whatever extremes it allows for? In some games the use of glitches is the only thing you can minimize or maximize, and we would be highlighting those differences officially, rather then requiring it to be entertaining.
It’s not the entertainment aspect I’m referring to. It’s wether or not it creates a notable difference in how the game is played.
Here’s an example, in [4048M], the entire game contains no glitches or bugs, except for when it reaches 6-3 where it performs a glitch that saves 50 frames overall.
This is a clip of the glitch: https://youtube.com/clip/Ugkx4ImmE_J0Hlv4TUZ66bTlRG7LlshuNExV
Here’s what the SNES run does for reference: https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxQVqxP0OYbNFWRzd9HEO8phmiowr7RYlq
Would it make sense to do a glitchless TAS for DKC2 GBA, where the only difference would be that one stage? While every other level would be basically identical? Because I don’t see how that’s a good enough argument to put it into standard just on the fact alone that it’s glitchless.
[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
Perhaps we need to establish some degree of difference between glitched/glitchless branches to allow both in standard class.
I think it would make it more subjective, because when it comes to the "x enough or not" arguments, there appears the need for something else objective that we could rely on, to then decide whether the difference is subjectively big enough or not. But why add this extra ambiguity?
I can't argue against it being more subjective that way.
feos wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
I agree that it seems odd to have two nearly identical runs side by side in standard just because one uses a glitch that saves a tiny fraction of the overall run time.
Why?.
Because I was thinking about it in regards to bloating the site; which honestly hasn't really been a major concern for me personally, but I feel others have expressed opinions concerning bloat in the past (no I don't have specific examples).
From a more exclusive/elitist mindset (that we've been shifting away from), one could argue that it's nigh redundant and unnecessary and thus bloating. From a more open mindset (which we've been shifting toward), one could argue for allowing both side-by-side with no issues regardless of similarities. While I've almost always leaned for more inclusion of stuff on the site--especially from an archival standpoint--I do occasionally slip back into considering things in older more exclusive ways.
Regardless, my bolded statement should have made it clear that I'm more in favor of inclusion as opposed to exclusion.
feos wrote:
DrD2k9 wrote:
So perhaps we could compromise and keep "Glitchless" branches as being published into the Aternative class, but make an exception rule that "Glitchless" runs aren't held to the entertainment requirements that other Alternative class goals would require. This would make "Glitchless" branches more of a pseudo-standard situation; where acceptance would strictly based on obeying the movie rules sans glitches, while still having the actual publication being listed with all other Alternative goal runs.
Which problems does that solve that appear if it's just a standard goal?
Only publication sorting by class; and only then if we consider it a problem to have both very similar runs side by side in a list of only standard class publications.
FWIW, I already mentioned that I'm effectively in favor of having "glitchless" in standard class. I was mainly trying to suggest possible compromise options for anyone who's primarily against them in standard.
Arguably, if we take the perspective of Standard Class being goals that are monitored/inherent to the game and Alternative Class being more varied/arbitrary goals imposed or chosen by the author and not monitored by the game itself (i.e. walkathon); beating a game without glitches accomplishes the main goal inherent to a game which is beating the game using the intended means of doing so. It would thus fall under Standard class in my opinion. The fact that a glitched run which finishes the game faster may exist, doesn't negate the fact that a "glitchless" run is still a standard goal of a video game.
EDIT:
EZGames69 wrote:
It’s whether or not it creates a notable difference in how the game is played..
This brings us back to subjectivity. How notable a difference is doesn't negate the fact that it's a difference in goal methodology.
100% is usually a goal that is trackable by the game itself.
[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
The current Standard category is a great pillar of stability for the site: Any%, 100%, and Max score are common between most every game out there. I don’t think Glitchless is a common enough category as it only arises after a game gets completely destroyed by one (or many) glitches and exploits.
Alternative is designed to capture all the rest. This may lead to Alternative becoming bigger than Standard in an extreme case, but that in and of itself shouldn’t be a problem. The extra runs are still being published to the site which is the most important part of inclusion.
100% is usually a goal that is trackable by the game itself.
I don't think that makes any difference to it potentially being extremely similar to any%. I'm concerned about category/branch bloat myself, but I don't think it's a new issue.
The current Standard category is a great pillar of stability for the site: Any%, 100%, and Max score are common between most every game out there. I don’t think Glitchless is a common enough category as it only arises after a game gets completely destroyed by one (or many) glitches and exploits.
Alternative is designed to capture all the rest. This may lead to Alternative becoming bigger than Standard in an extreme case, but that in and of itself shouldn’t be a problem. The extra runs are still being published to the site which is the most important part of inclusion.
The problem with this perspective is the entertainment requirement for Alternative Class. The entertainment requirement could prevent a solid “Glitchless” run from being published (even if it’s drastically different than the glitched run) simply because it doesn’t get enough entertainment votes. This is most likely to happen with lesser known games/systems; and it would effectively prevent a good “Glitchless” run from being publishable even if it’s otherwise acceptable.
The problem with this perspective is the entertainment requirement for Alternative Class. The entertainment requirement could prevent a solid “Glitchless” run from being published (even if it’s drastically different than the glitched run) simply because it doesn’t get enough entertainment votes. This is most likely to happen with lesser known games/systems; and it would effectively prevent a good “Glitchless” run from being publishable even if it’s otherwise acceptable.
I did forget about entertainment as part of Alternative, but there would still be Playground for these runs.
I think that in priciple Glitchless fits very well in standard, where we already have fastest completion and no major skips. In fact, no major skips seems weirder to me to include in standard than glitchless. I don't think there were great difficulties with defining no major skips, even tho that also requires some sense of intended gameplay, and what constitutes a glitch.
Practically, I think starting with rough guidelines and then refining them as needed as we go through game by game would be best.
i would only allow it if it's significantly different from glitched gameplay, in which most cases it exist, it is.
As I mentioned above, it runs into subjective arguments of how different is different enough and everyone having a special personal feeling about it.
Having 3 levels of the most fundamental factors of gaming makes the most sense IMO:
lowest completion, fastest completion, full completion
fewest players, fastest amount of players, most players
fewest glitches, all common glitches, most glitches
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.
While it may be this questionable for some games, the benefit for games where it's less questionable outweighs it to me. Because by introducing any borderline that isn't minimum/maximum we're losing objectivity, which makes it harder to manage because we will have to answer two questions each time:
Should a particular borderline case count as allowed or banned from stanard?
Is our borderline actually good enough in itself, or should it be improved?
The very reason we've added standard is people not super eager to provide feedback for every single submission, therefore there was too little data to work with if you have to decide on a tier (or maybe rejection). While there's now much less content that requires feedback to be judged, it's those borderline cases that make the issues accumulate over time and lead to judges hating to have to collect feedback, and users wearing off as well. So for things that can be measured objectively, that's usually a sign that it could be standard.
Now there's a question of how hard it can be to figure out whether some used technique is a glitch or not, but it's there regardless of where we draw the line in the end.
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.
Doesn't that mean that we're letting the game shine through whatever extremes it allows for? In some games the use of glitches is the only thing you can minimize or maximize, and we would be highlighting those differences officially, rather then requiring it to be entertaining.
I think this is the most important point in the thread, and actually probably one of the coolest features TASVideos could ever offer: comparing two extremes and showcasing exactly how relevant glitches are to TASing.
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As for the subject itself, I'd rule out anything that would be considered a glitch, otherwise what's the point? All or nothing. Things like wall clips, etc., would definitely fall under my definition of a glitch. I'd say it should be pretty strict guidelines for "glitchless", otherwise the runner may as well just do a glitched run. Even minor glitches should not be allowed as it violates the basic terms of the name. Plus it helps solve a lot of brutal discussion both here and by the YouTube audience before it even starts.
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But what are potential problems for games where we may try to invent this category from scratch? Do we even need any kind of future proof terms for this?
The main potential problem is mismatched rulesets (which are the definitions for our purpose) between ourselves and the RTA/unassisted community, i.e. what we want to see as the optimal ruleset for the glitchless category vs. what the playerbase and the viewerbase of the game in question wants to see. In cases where there's either no community around the game or at least no universally accepted standard for glitchless runs, and we have to come up with one, there will be situations where others don't agree. In which case we have a choice to either adapt the definition for the game in question or stand by ours if we have reasons to believe it suits a TAS better. I expect this to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
The obvious thing to do to minimize the rate and severity of mismatches is to exclude everything that people most certainly wouldn't want in a glitchless category:
Any and all forms of save/RAM corruption, including overflow glitches.
Level skips that don't involve any valid in-game skip mechanic.
Use of any leftover debug features or official cheat codes.
Out-of-bounds travel for cases where the game character violates solid room/level boundaries (i.e. by clipping or otherwise glitching through them). Situations where the character goes around the boundaries (i.e. by jumping over them, like you do in SMB1 to get to the warp zone in 1-2) would typically be considered fair game, but if it breaks the gameplay too much (as in, say, Serious Sam where you can skip about 1/3 of the game by doing so), it may need to be considered depending on the case.
Those are the hard rules; the things we can easily discard outright. The rest (the "soft" rules) should depend on the game and the impact the glitches have imo. I think generally makes more sense to err on the side of excluding everything that looks sus, but, for instance, I don't think we'll ever need to discuss whether to use mockball in "glitchless" runs of Super Metroid because over the years it has universally been normalized as a movement mechanic as opposed to a glitch. The operative word here is "normalized", as it was a result of decades of community consensus, but in our case we may have to preemptively normalize things based on the gameplay impact as said before.
DrD2k9 wrote:
Consider that some people feel that actions like wall jumping and clipping through walls (as in SMB1 & SMB3) should be considered glitches as opposed to simply being considered optimized use of normal game mechanics.
If we allow ourselves to get hung up on the semantics, the next thing to discuss is whether stabbing a person should be considered murder as opposed to an optimized use of the knife. Your Honor, I only used the knife for its intended purpose! You can always arrive at unintended results even if you limit yourself purely to intended mechanics. Hence, rather than the mechanics, you need to draw the line at the results you want to achieve using them, or at least follow the lines drawn by somebody with authority to do so.
This is exactly why feos is talking about alleviating player/audience concerns as opposed to coming up with rigid definitions. If there's a vocal support for a run that omits something that is far too effective—whether a programming oversight or a design oversight—then it's a "glitch". Let's just go with that to make things simpler for ourselves. We're ultimately a content platform for serving runs audience wants to see. It may result in things becoming vague every now and then, but as far as I'm concerned it's better to present two run categories that the audience wants to see the most as opposed to two run categories that follow the definitions most neatly. Definitions are a convenience feature, not a goal unto themselves.
EZGames69 wrote:
My only issue with making it standard is not every game has their entire speedrun changed just because they don’t go for glitches. If a speedrun for a game happens to be purely glitchless, but has one glitch that saves like 2 seconds (in say a 20 minute run), then would it make sense to have both a normal TAS and a glitchless TAS where the only difference is that one rather insignificant change?
I don't know if it's reasonable to expect anybody to do a new 20-minute TAS for an insignificant change. Sure sounds like too much effort.
In any case I don't see the issue. People (including myself at the time) were constantly fearmongering about site bloat when the site had less than 300 runs total. Now it has over 3000, a full order of magnitude more than back then, and exactly nothing bad happened as the result; in fact, it's been something to celebrate. Gee, the 2007 me must feel like an idiot (and would be right to). If the argument requires you to constantly shift the goalposts of the bad thing you're expecting to happen, it's a horrible argument.
Warp wrote:
Edit: I think I understand now: It's my avatar, isn't it? It makes me look angry.
The main potential problem is mismatched rulesets (which are the definitions for our purpose) between ourselves and the RTA/unassisted community, i.e. what we want to see as the optimal ruleset for the glitchless category vs. what the playerbase and the viewerbase of the game in question wants to see. In cases where there's either no community around the game or at least no universally accepted standard for glitchless runs, and we have to come up with one, there will be situations where others don't agree. In which case we have a choice to either adapt the definition for the game in question or stand by ours if we have reasons to believe it suits a TAS better. I expect this to be decided on a case-by-case basis.
Yes.
moozooh wrote:
If we allow ourselves to get hung up on the semantics, the next thing to discuss is whether stabbing a person should be considered murder as opposed to an optimized use of the knife. Your Honor, I only used the knife for its intended purpose! You can always arrive at unintended results even if you limit yourself purely to intended mechanics. Hence, rather than the mechanics, you need to draw the line at the results you want to achieve using them, or at least follow the lines drawn by somebody with authority to do so.
Interestingly, the OoT community thinking is the opposite: they've agreed on what they consider a glitch, and none of the results of the rest of the techniques is banned, even if it looks glitchy. But yes, when the primary criterion for any policy or decision is whether it makes sense, we'll figure out when we want to agree with RTA and when we don't.
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've disagreed with RTA rules before, strictly because there's always going to be cases where some ruleset works for us but doesn't work for RTA or vice versa. There's already a decent number of other things that are inherent to us (strict universal Power On -> Final Input timing being the main one), so it shouldn't matter if we adapt glitchless rulesets to fit us or even come up with them ourselves if need be. The beautiful thing is that nothing we come up with has to be set in stone. Ultimately, what's the worst case scenario if we're wrong? A run gets published? Heavens, me! Think of the children!!!
TASvideos Admin and acting Senior Judge 💙 | CohostwarmCabin wrote:
You shouldn't need a degree in computer science to get into this hobby.
I think RTA rules shouldn't be followed 1:1 (as they have been known to be surprisingly glitchy), but are definitely a good thing to compare your own pre-determined judgement against and come up with a solution per game. Plus a lot of them (if the category really takes off) won't have any guidelines to go off of.
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I have to agree with EZGames here that "glitchless" should go to alternative. I think it can never be non-arbitrary for any game even if every single human on earth agree to a given ruleset. And it is also kind of a speed-entertainment trade-off in a TAS setting. It can be the more popular branch while also being alternative.
