I decided to share the runs that would only be passable in one rule but not on the other judgement. They're slower and less inventive versions of categories for Mortal Kombat: Armageddon, so I oppose that they should be publishable. But should the new arcade mode Deadly Alliance TAS not obsolete the current published TAS (which is a slower and less inventive run by itself, only made because SRAM and a VMF was hard to provide) as proposed to divide records for SRAM and non-SRAM using moviefiles, they would be the non-SRAM records and would still be faster than any RTA attemps due to their RNG manipulation and character choice that only is available for this RNG manipulation foregoing consistency strats like Goro or Sheeva in RTA. (sheeva stomp is more finnicky to combo so you dont see her in leaderboards despite higher damage) Here are both Endurance and Arcade modes for Moloch:
Link to videoLink to video
Is any of these runs remotely interesting? Is this what the site is trying to achieve with the bizarre SRAM rulesets? Nobody has ever made any category for this in an actual speedrun of the whole MK series, so i have to guess the answer is no. I'm waiting for the rules to be set to decide if i submit these or not.
One could make argument how Moloch isn't the absurd KAF character and it's interesting to know if kaf was banned what is the next best thing but technically he's still a sub boss character which is broken in some aspects by itself, big damage unblockable ball move, cant be thrown or juggled normally by normal sized characters. He was actually considered to be banned in some competitions back in the day and one could argue that all big body characters should be banned along KAF for the throw and juggle immunity.
( big body chars are blaze, goro, kintaro, moloch, onaga, only they can throw each other around, and have basic juggle protections)
I believe the game dev's intended gameplay modes and speedrunning community choice divisions should be a focus of TASVideos main categories when it comes to racing and fighting games TASers. The SRAM division is interesting for adventure and RPG games, like banjo kazooie whcih has a data carryover glitch, or newgame plus categories which exist in rpg to make new versions of the adventure, but shouldn't affect competitive games in which unlocking content was the only way devs could expand game hours. The respective game community should be the standard, this works for most games and when the time comes for a game in which it doesn't, you can use your other rulesets or entertainment value. Wanna make up some weird category that doesn't exist?
My heart is currently bleeding for the submission https://tasvideos.org/8898S , i know it's not a SRAM related issue, but i don't think we should be even considering not having a run like that in the site. It's clearly the run that the wario land 4 fans want, how could this be held back by entertainment consideration by people like me who don't enjoy platformers and Wario Land? It's clear the author put in a lot of effort, knows the game inside out and made something worthy of being available in this site. It's this kind of doubt about the worth of somebody else's work that makes people not submit in the first place.
TAS i'm interested:
megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched
fighting games with speed goals in general
Is any of these runs remotely interesting? Is this what the site is trying to achieve with the bizarre SRAM rulesets? Nobody has ever made any category for this in an actual speedrun of the whole MK series, so i have to guess the answer is no. I'm waiting for the rules to be set to decide if i submit these or not.
I don't get why you would make these runs and want to get them published if you do not think them remotely interesting? Who or what is forcing people to make every publishable run imaginable?
Personally I don't like watching these fighting games, but I do think it's an interesting principle to see how fast one can beat a game out of the box from power on.
Is any of these runs remotely interesting? Is this what the site is trying to achieve with the bizarre SRAM rulesets? Nobody has ever made any category for this in an actual speedrun of the whole MK series, so i have to guess the answer is no. I'm waiting for the rules to be set to decide if i submit these or not.
I don't get why you would make these runs and want to get them published if you do not think them remotely interesting? Who or what is forcing people to make every publishable run imaginable?
Personally I don't like watching these fighting games, but I do think it's an interesting principle to see how fast one can beat a game out of the box from power on.
To me this site is like an archive of sorts, if a speedruns exists, it should also have the corresponding TAS to show the audience what perfect play in the speedrun would be. The site should also ahve playarounds to demonstrate what is possible as a whole in a specific game in a more entertaining way.
Since i've seen a complete lack of interest in these specific genres, I started TASing them myself. This is something i wanted to watch but nobody except for the guy that TASed MK2 did and Spike/Zoe did. The Moloch runs are just a way of showing that we shouldn't be creating categories based on SRAM unless the categories already exists within the speedrun community, that there won't be better content coming from this rule. There is no corresponding SRAM clear category in the games i commented, only fastest completions and such should be the treatment. Not every single game needs to have the main category be clean SRAM movie files.
TAS i'm interested:
megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched
fighting games with speed goals in general
Not every single game needs to have the main category be clean SRAM movie files.
That's not at all what was being proposed. There's no such thing as a "main" category on TASVideos, other than what individuals consider on their own to be important. And clearly for these games, starting from SRAM would be more important to the respective communities, therefore they'd be considered the main branches by those communities. In fact, there won't even be an SRAM clear branch in the first place unless such a TAS is created and submitted.
Nobody is enforcing a ruleset of clearing SRAM here, either. It's allowed, not required. Glitchless is equally allowed and equally not required, but you're seemingly not complaining about having the ability to submit glitchless TASes of fighting games. If a community wants to make a TAS under a particular ruleset then they should be allowed to do so. Banning people from submitting SRAM-clear TASes of fighting games because some fighting game TASers don't like it is unnecessary gatekeeping and does the very thing you claim to be against, which is enforcing a particular ruleset on people who may not want to follow it.
Again, if people are TASing it then that shows enough interest to make a branch. If they're not TASing it then there won't be a branch. Many games don't have all possible branches that the rules allow, because a lot of those branches haven't been TASed.
As for the actual topic at hand, I think New Game+ is a good general name but I'd be open to other game-specific branch names as well, like "All Characters Unlocked" if that applies, or using some in-game terminology if there is any. I think it would make sense to look at it in a more case-by-case way and taking into account what the author or game's community prefers to call it.
Once again, TASers prefer to do slower movies than go through SRAM verification movie hassle. This is not a comment on the quality of run itself, I couldn't possibly judge anything about this game,if this is a technical achievement or not, but it's a hint that the site will have slower runs published by making a division of SRAM clear and SRAM anchored movies, including having these weird comparisons that Eien86 done with optimal chars RTA times and suboptimal chars TAS times. Viewer will watch the run and ask "why is RTA beating this or that part"? Of course, i'm not posting that on the thread for the game submission as it would be unfair if it affected the judging of the movie.
Submission as an example:
https://tasvideos.org/Forum/Topics/25195
Yes, the player could some day improve this with SRAM unlocked chars, but then again why would the person do it? It wouldn't be an improvement and the movie would already be published with slower characters, why go through the trouble?
TAS i'm interested:
megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched
fighting games with speed goals in general
Did you discuss things with Blazingmo at all prior to posting this? You cite the submission as evidence that "people don't want to go through SRAM verification hassle" and say that "the author's never gonna feel the need to make a movie with SRAM enabled", but it seems to me that unless Blazingmo has actually told you this directly, you're just making assumptions about his interests and intentions. Many TASers choose to TAS with SRAM disabled because they find that a preferable category, or make new iterations of a TAS for small and big improvements over and over again. This is Blazingmo's second submission of this exact game, even.
Yes, the player could some day improve this with SRAM unlocked chars, but then again why would the person do it?
Because they want to, and they want to see an SRAM backed/unlocked character's run published along side the baseline clear SRAM run.
It wouldn't be an improvement and the movie would already be published with slower characters, why go through the trouble?
True that it wouldn't be an improvement to the baseline (clear SRAM) branch. But again, it can still be published along side the baseline (clear SRAM) run.
It really seems to me that you fail to realize that both types of runs can be published simultaneously (if their respective branches are labeled appropriately). You also seem to argue that nobody will do SRAM anchored runs simply because a clear SRAM run already exists. While you personally may not see the value in having both types of run published, you cannot project that opinion onto everyone else in order to make blanket statements that no one will "go through the trouble" to make an SRAM anchored movie simply because a baseline run exists as already published.
"Did you discuss things with Blazingmo at all prior to posting this?" No.
It's however mentioned at the current Deadly Alliance TAS that a more optimal run would be produced through a verification movie. The player knew it was suboptimal but decided not to go through with attempting a faster run.
A trouble the player decided to avoid due to bad experiences like i'm having now in my MK Deception TAS which has like an hour long verification with much more risk of not syncing. just to get better stage selection and the exact same character saving a lot of time.
I'm glad Wario Land 4 Zipless got accepted btw.
I took my time before answering this because the conversation really tips me off the wrong way, I feel like the suggested change to the rules in my perceptions subtracts the value of the research and routing of using or not a SRAM unlocked characters in the discussed TASes, it seems like the participants consider it trivial to go through the hassle of adhering to site rules and producing verification movies when in fact it is not. It's the constant risk of having the runs disqualified for some bizarre technicality, much bigger risk of not syncing the runs and now it's not even going to be considered an improvement to the "easier to make" runs. Again, I feel stupid doing the best I can to get fastest possible run published here when it's not considered the best there really for that specific category. I could just have sticked to the "second best easier to publish" really. People insist on the new game plus concept but these games are no RPGs, they're games which are supposed to have its competition all with full roster
enabled and no divisions by which is initially available or not. Unlockables are the artificial way of expanding gameplay time in these titles.
Tool Assisted "Second best easier to publish" movies is something i thought about later after writing this.
TAS i'm interested:
megaman series: mmbn1 all chips, mmx3 any% psx glitched
fighting games with speed goals in general
it seems like the participants consider it trivial to go through the hassle of adhering to site rules and producing verification movies when in fact it is not.
It's incredibly ironic that you're accusing others of making submissions harder to get published when it's your proposal (which I understand as disallowing cleared SRAM submissions to be accepted as separate branches for fighting games) that would create these exact barriers that you claim to be against.
Allowing people to submit what they want to work on breaks down barriers to entry. Disallowing people from submitting certain types of movies does the opposite, it creates barriers to entry. In this case, disallowing SRAM-cleared submissions quite literally creates exactly what you're arguing against: it forces anyone who wants to work on a fighting game to make an SRAM-anchored movie or else it would be rejected.
KusogeMan wrote:
I feel like the suggested change to the rules in my perceptions subtracts the value of the research and routing of using or not a SRAM unlocked characters in the discussed TASes
Maybe there was a miscommunication along the way, but the "change to the rules" that started the most recent discussion was what to call SRAM-anchored branches. And the thread in general was originally about allowing SRAM-anchored branches in the first place, which was officially added to the rules a while ago. You're the one here who's proposing a change to the rules to reduce what kinds of movies can be accepted for fighting games. Most others have argued in favor of keeping the rules as-is, with both SRAM-cleared and SRAM-anchored movies being acceptable.
Whether the branches are defined by SRAM or by something else seems like something better suited for case-by-case decisions on an individual game's branches, rather than a sitewide (or genre-wide) rules change. If a game has people working on SRAM-cleared TASes then they should be able to get those TASes published as such. And if a game doesn't have people working on SRAM-cleared TASes then it's a moot point as there won't be a branch for it in the first place.
KusogeMan wrote:
I could just have sticked to the "second best easier to publish" really.
You've previously brought up the argument that TASers will only work on the easiest branch of their game, but I think this argument is out of touch with reality and is easily disproven by spending 5 minutes looking around the site. Many TASers work on whatever interests them, even if it's more challenging than something else. And in this particular case where the extra challenge comes exclusively from creating the verification movie, I would suggest spending less effort towards trying to get other submissions rejected and more effort towards proposals that streamline the process of verifying SRAM-anchored movies (which was one of the original questions in the first post of this thread). I can certainly see a solution where a save file is provided along with documentation on that game's save structure instead of having to provide a full verification movie. But it's hard to have that discussion when your argument is exclusively about adding even more restrictions to what can be accepted.
Honestly, a lot of this comes across as a case of taking a personal distaste and trying to push it onto others. It's perfectly fine to not care about a particular branch and only pay attention to another branch that you do care about. This happens all the time, both in RTA speedrunning communities and in TASing communities. But when it turns into trying to enforce that personal distaste onto others as an official policy, that's when things start to get back to the old way that TASVideos did things that so many people have been working hard to change.
Allowing both SRAM-cleared and SRAM-anchored movies as opposed to only one or the other gives TASers the freedom to work on what they actually want to work on without having to worry about their movie being disallowed on the site before they even make their first input. And I'm very much in favor of staying on that path of acceptance, rather than reverting back to more restrictive policies.
The post is becoming impossibly long so I'll break it into several...
So I've reread everything once again to understand what the community thinks (including the non-public chats that spawned these new questions), and it's hard to summarize it all because a ton of different things were used as arguments, and not enough effort has been put into stating problems, questions, and reasons in the clearest way possible. So if I miss or misinterpret some idea, please explain it again as clearly and logically as possible.
I should start with explaining the current direction of the site.
During the first years of TASVideos we were very restrictive in what ends up being represented as publications, because there was a ton of misconceptions in the outside world that had to be disproved, and this new hobby kinda had to prove itself by featuring the most awesome stuff first. The most entertaining movies were preferred, and the rules weren't super strict otherwise.
This was considered too restricting and the concept of tiers was introduced, so in addition to the most interesting movies we could have boring movies that accomplish some very standard and basic goal (initially the only allowed Vault goals were fastest completion and full completion). But since for every single submission we had to decide on a tier, it led to tons of borderline cases where simply based on feedback (or lack thereof) we were unsure how to judge something.
Since people like to be creative and they don't always aim to follow well-established paths, we also had to clarify more and more things in Movie Rules to make judgments more consistent and future-proof. Because old rules and wording would either not solve some new problem, or the solution was worded in a cloudy way that could be interpreted differently by different people.
Those trends would build up over the years and eventually turn into unmanageable mess that was the least future-proof, because it was impossible to keep maintaining. So we retired the tier system and switched to a class system that let us depend on feedback much less for goals that are well-established and standard, and only need feedback for goals that are inherently subjective.
That alone helped immensely, but then we realized there were other problematic trends that failed to make everyone's life better. The most problematic ones were prosecutorial bias and gatekeeping. We were so restrictive that we risked becoming irrelevant, because TASers could eventually abandon the ship that was purely viewer-focused and not creator-focused.
So we reevaluated the main goals of the site, and switched from being an exposition of cool things to being a service for the TAS community. Being too restrictive did result in parts of our community having to go on their own for a bunch of years and currently we're trying to fix that. And for authors in general, we switched from being judgmental about their works to being helpful for them, because that's how we get more people involved and educated, which leads to more content in general, and as a result to more awesome content that the site always wanted to have.
On the other hand, inclusivity on TASVideos is not an entirely new concept. It's the neatest way to have a compromise between conflicting camps if their opinions can't technically be implemented directly at once. We discuss opinions and boil them down to something objective, and then rely on things that are the most objective for all parties.
Allowing different things as different branches used to be the most harmless solution to any kind of disagreement about goals, because different crowds could have something they care about featured on the site and up-to-date. People spent the recent years fighting for acceptance of some goal that used to be rejected entirely, or only allowed under very strict conditions. So we started actually believing that giving creators more freedom benefits everyone long-term, because results of their hard work won't be considered "unnecessary" after the fact anymore, by judges who've never even played those games.
We can definitely afford some extra slots in Alternative for things that are not as stunning in terms of entertainment, unless questionable branches become a problem, which is when we start obsoleting the most mediocre ones. And in Standard, we can have extra slots for movies that shouldn't compete with the most basic and natural (literally standard) goals.
This is why I was surprised to realize that we may have missed something important during the initial discussion half a year ago, and that in fact savegame rules we established failed to solve fighting games. And racing games. And non-fastest-completon movies. We've had a staff talk and couldn't agree on how obsoletion should work in those cases, so the most reasonable next step was bringing it up to the community.
And the result was quite interesting. It wasn't a hard community split between 2 options that can't co-exist where an independent solution was necessary that could work both ways depending on statistics (objective data settling the conflict of subjectivities). Instead it was a request to change the direction and goal of the site for one particular case of fighting games ... two particular cases of fighting and racing games ... three particular cases of fighting and racing games and also non-fastest-completion movies.
And it would have just been a new consensus if the community went "oh! right! yes!" and agreed that it makes sense to change the direction and goal of the site in those individual cases. Or if that extra clause clearly felt like it matches the direction and goal of the site and fulfills it more faithfully, and we simply missed it the first time around.
For example, that happens when some clause has all the traits of a workable solution:
Overwhelming majority of the audience subjectively likes it or at least doesn't particularly mind it
The logic is compelling to people who agree and even to those who don't enjoy it
Even if logic and feelings don't cut it, it still looks like the most fair option given the situation at hand, one that's the most faithful to our top priorities
However that did not happen, and a lot of people were actively against savegame ever obsoleting clear save branches in Standard. I've read all this talk several times by now, and I still don't quite understand logically which problem exactly such obsoletion would solve without causing new problems. And it does seem to contradict the site's goals.
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.
Is any of these runs remotely interesting? Is this what the site is trying to achieve with the bizarre SRAM rulesets? Nobody has ever made any category for this in an actual speedrun of the whole MK series, so i have to guess the answer is no.
[...]
I believe the game dev's intended gameplay modes and speedrunning community choice divisions should be a focus of TASVideos main categories when it comes to racing and fighting games TASers. The SRAM division is interesting for adventure and RPG games, like banjo kazooie whcih has a data carryover glitch, or newgame plus categories which exist in rpg to make new versions of the adventure, but shouldn't affect competitive games in which unlocking content was the only way devs could expand game hours. The respective game community should be the standard, this works for most games and when the time comes for a game in which it doesn't, you can use your other rulesets or entertainment value. Wanna make up some weird category that doesn't exist?
KusogeMan wrote:
To me this site is like an archive of sorts, if a speedruns exists, it should also have the corresponding TAS to show the audience what perfect play in the speedrun would be.
These 2 posts are quite remarkable because they highlight the misconception about our goals while also guessing them almost right and self-contradicting.
The site is an archive of TASes indeed, because our goal is being a service for TASers that remains relevant over the years. If we are not useful for various TASer groups, they split away and we eventually become useless for more and more such groups. And to remain useful we want to educate, encourage, and inspire people to become skilled TASers, and then to meet their requirements with our policies, like the Judge Guidelines now say:
Above all else, treat our community with care. Be kind and courteous to them, always respect their work, encourage them to continue, and use your knowledge and skill to help them improve.
Always adapt to the needs of the community. Consider every angle of a problem, and work together with the rest of Staff to provide the best solution.
The site should change to fit the community. The community should never change to fit the site.
Service-based leadership even happened to be adelikat's vision for the new admin team and I independently happened to have a bunch of pagesabout it and they got Samsara's approval back in 2021.
So we absolutely want to give TASers more freedom and safety for their experiments, because only then they can create truly powerful things.
What we've never done though is considering developer intentions when deciding on policies (or anything ever), because creativity means doing the unexpected. The only thing we have is the product itself (the game) and content that exists objectively, and that's the main purpose of the Standard class. There is a category that is subjectively closer to intended gameplay, but we've never questioned the fact that it may also be glitched to death in its own regard, and heavy glitching is very much not what the devs intended to present to the world. Sure some people may not be entertained by such movies, but developer intent is never brought up as a complaint. We simply don't care about it.
What speedrun communities do may be relevant in cases when we want to allow some branch based on how supported it is, but lack of support in speedrun communities has not ever been brought up as a factor when arguing that we should not support it either. We have our own community for such decisions, and our own site goals that I explained in details. Telling our own community to "deal with it" because some people who have never posted here don't speedrun a given category yet, is ridiculous level of arrogance.
And the self-contradiction part is where an archive is meant to feature achievements while also limiting them in some specific case because suddenly it doesn't matter at all what can be achieved there.
KusogeMan wrote:
Once again, TASers prefer to do slower movies than go through SRAM verification movie hassle.
This claim lacks any statistical data across any amount of TASers other than like 2 people, and it assumes intentions of everyone else in a very specific illogical way. There's no way to measure how many people on the site considered making a savegame movie and decided to do a power-on one instead because of the "SRAM verification movie hassle".
Savegame movies always existed and they were always fine. If someone looks at how hard it would be to make a verification movie, yet they don't mind making a full TAS, they somehow consider the verification movie harder to make than the entire power-on TAS? That's ridiculous to imagine, because I don't know a single game where a full TAS is easier to make than a verification movie. Sure, making a verification and a full TAS is harder than just the full TAS, but the verification movie usually kinda fades compared to amount of work that goes into a well research and optimized movie regardless of verifications.
If someone is so afraid of making a verification movie, it sounds like they just don't have enough energy to TAS at all. So if we try to force them to TAS harder by obsoleting the easier-to-make thing, it feels bizarre to expect that they will make a proper savegame movie just out of obedience.
On the other hand, if we have room for both branches, everyone could pick a project they currently feel the energy for, and be tempted and encouraged to work on harder things because it's cooler, not because they have to. Creativity and inspiration are incompatible with involuntariness.
To be continued...
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.
Not sure how relevant this post is, but meh. I actually do think there is something to the whole SRAM being a turn off and deciding not to make a TAS using it. Thinking about a couple things to make the process better.
1. Lack of Documentation. Actually finding articles about SRAM and how to use it is difficult on TASVideos currently. I did find https://tasvideos.org/Glossary#SaveRam, but not SRAM. Also no article titles that that pops out for someone even looking for SRAM. Maybe some tutorials could help with visibility about acceptable usage. Are there even SRAM tutorials on TASVideos since having trouble finding them. Not even sure if there are ways to move SRAM between emulators which might improve things since tasers want to TAS games, not play through a long game to make a SRAM file and will probably want to use an existing SRAM from a different emulator. Probably need a full page about suing various emulator's SRAM and Dolphin in particular seems like it needs a lot of clarity up front.
2. SRAM Rules are hard to understand. Most people do not want to spend a long time having to dig and find articles and spend time trying to understand TASVideos' specific cases regarding them. I am all for making things more uniform. The current https://tasvideos.org/MovieRules page also seems to have rules and info on SRAM in various sections as well instead of a grouped in one section which hurts understanding. Maybe even some kind of grid that shows acceptability for various goals could work. Like various Standard, Playground, Alternate goals on the Y axis, and then showing standard non saveRAM, save state, SaveRAM Fighting Game, SaveRAM Racing, (other?) for the y axis, and then in the box having a green "YES" for acceptable and a Red "NO" for not, and maybe OBS for Obsoletable()?. Something like that
3. SRAM Desyncs. See this happen a lot especially with certain emulators like Dolphin. So even if it works on one machine it may not work on another for some reason or another. Which means it may not even be judge-able to become accepted. So it becomes a more risky proposition to even attempt since in addition to stressing whether a submission will be accepted, the verification movie and SaveRAM/SRAM have to work correctly as well. Maybe some verbiage about encouraging to share the SRAM and asking others to see if they can run the file at several points during the TAS creation process could catch desyncs.
For one I do not think the term "SRAM" or even "SaveRAM" really means a lot to most people. So a more obvious term through the site could be better.
In summary. More tutorials, and more easily viewable rules in Articles section, and more uniformity for rules would help since all those exceptions are obnoxious, verbiage asking others for desync checks throughout process.
For one I do not think the term "SRAM" or even "SaveRAM" really means a lot to most people. So a more obvious term through the site could be better.
A new and clearer term would especially be appreciated for Dolphin, as the GameCube stores game progress on flash memory in memory cards but also has an SRAM chip that stores console-wide settings. Normally when TASers say "SRAM" they mean game save data, but that usage of the term doesn't make sense on its face when talking about the GameCube.
Joined: 8/30/2020
Posts: 79
Location: Sydney, Australia
CoolHandMike wrote:
I did find https://tasvideos.org/Glossary#SaveRam, but not SRAM. [...] For one I do not think the term "SRAM" or even "SaveRAM" really means a lot to most people. So a more obvious term through the site could be better.
SRAM is mentioned under that exact header. There's also a glossary entry for "New Game Plus", though the two weren't linked before I changed it just now.
CoolHandMike wrote:
[...] Not even sure if there are ways to move SRAM between emulators [...]
This obviously differs by system, but it seems for the most part emulators use the same, trivial format. EmuHawk complicates this whenever there are multiple memory cards or linked consoles, since we concatenate them into one file. Our documentation is lacking here too.
I contribute to BizHawk as Linux/cross-platform lead, testing and automation lead, and UI designer. This year, I'm experimenting with streaming BizHawk development on Twitch. nope
Links to find me elsewhere and to some of my side projects are on my personal site. I will respond on Discord faster than to PMs on this site.
Hey look buddy, I'm an engineer. That means I solve problems. Not problems like "What is software," because that would fall within the purview of your conundrums of philosophy. I solve practical problems. For instance, how am I gonna stop some high-wattage thread-ripping monster of a CPU dead in its tracks? The answer: use code. And if that don't work? Use more code.
For one I do not think the term "SRAM" or even "SaveRAM" really means a lot to most people. So a more obvious term through the site could be better.
A new and clearer term would especially be appreciated for Dolphin, as the GameCube stores game progress on flash memory in memory cards but also has an SRAM chip that stores console-wide settings. Normally when TASers say "SRAM" they mean game save data, but that usage of the term doesn't make sense on its face when talking about the GameCube.
What about the term suggested by Masterjun (and Wikipedia) - "savegame"? The purpose here is more important than the underlying technology (battery backed SRAM, Flash, etc), and it's clearly different from emulator savestates. And works as movie branches too instead of NG+.
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.
Anyway, back to my summary posts...
First I want to explain how the current system works, given the suggested new branch label. Then I'll go through potential complaints about it and see how to resolve them.
For almost every Standard goal there can be a "savegame" counterpart. I gets a special branch label highlighting its savegame nature, and formerly it was "NewGame+", but "savegame" is a much better term, because it covers all cases and communicated the main point more clearly and accurately. It also gets a special movie tag.
There's no obsoletion between different standard goals, even though sometimes different movies can be considered the same goal and supersede one another, for example if a game without an ending was completed to the end of the first full loop, and then someone extends it to reach a kill screen. Basically it's when a new movie contains an oldmovie while having the same goal.
"Savegame" goals that can't go to Standard, can go to Alternative if they look entertaining and and different to the audience than their Standard versions. Due to the nature of goals that aim for entertainment, it's possible that different Alternative goals will look very similar, and to avoid clutter we can properly obsolete some run that the audience likes less by something that feels like a new and improved version of it, even if the goals are not identical.
Having to pre-moderate Moons by only allowing things that actively entertain the audience so much that it's verbal about it, over the years wore out, because it stopped making sense to remain overly restrictive. So when we were brainstorming about retiring the tier system, I had this vision in mind:
feos wrote:
what we need to adjust compared to old TASVideos is lowering the entertainment cutoff and increasing the branch count cap.
So instead we post-moderate when there's an agreement that there are too many branches that are too similar.
Now, I said that "almost" every standard branch can have its "savegame" counterpart. Of course there can be exceptions when it's agreed that it doesn't make sense to separate them, for example when there's little to no gameplay difference added by post-completion. Then there are cases when something that you can unlock, while looking subjectively cool, is suboptimal in terms of objective speed. For example if you want to complete some game as quickly as possible from a fresh save with base characters, with unlocked extra characters you still need to complete the game ASAP. If new characters don't help with that, it just means base characters are more optimal. Which is why we have the "uses a suboptimal char" movie tag, and movies aiming for that simply go to Alternative instead of Standard.
Interestingly, suboptimal chars make labeling kinda tricky. Not necessarily harder to do, but it may look inconsistent across all movies on the site.
Publisher Guidelines wrote:
The point of branches is to highlight specific goals that runs may conform to. These goals are highlighted, because they introduce gameplay differences into TASes that are significant enough to be published as separate branches. Two kinds of goals exist:
Internal condition - something the game directly and unambiguously offers as an optional component of play which significantly affects what is seen from the game (warp usage, player amount, character choice).
External condition - something the players limit themselves to (exact completion percent, pacifist, certain glitch set).
We don't have a concept of "default goal", therefore we don't use labels like "any%" as a branch label. Instead we identify what is unique in every branch or set of branches, something that the other branches of the same game don't represent.
We put internal conditions into branch labels if there are (or can be) counterpart runs, for example if we have different movies using 1 player and 2 players, both will tell player count in branches. But if we would not allow some internal conditions to co-exist on their own, they don't have to be mentioned explicitly.
For example we don't allow branches for each character to co-exist in Standard, so any Standard movie will need to pick the most optimal character, and it won't be mentioned in the branch label. But if there's an Alternative counterpart branch that uses some character just to showcase it, that character will be mentioned in the label.
And here's a part even I'm not sure about, because it never happened before. If the standard goal uses the most optimal char, and the alternative movie uses a suboptimal char, sometimes they are spelled out in all branches:
Super Mario Bros. 2Castlevania III: Dracula's CurseCastlevania: Bloodlines
sometimes only the suboptimal char is spelled out
Super Mario Bros. 2Final FantasySuper Mario Advance
and sometimes only some branches spell out chars
Sonic 3 & KnucklesSonic Advance
Due to crazy differences between how games approach things we need to put into branch labels, I don't feel it's possible to make it all look 100% consistent. And the problem here is that putting chars into Standard labels may make it look like we accept different chars to Standard on their own, which we don't. Maybe we just need to accept (instead) the fact that branch labels can only make sense within one game? After all it's just a way to communicate differences between branches, which is usually needed for one game. Across different games, it may be possible to have a unified name that marks similar branches, but it's not guaranteed.
To be continued...
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.
For fighting and racing games that have additional fighters/cars that you can replay the game with, it makes sense to me if the branches are labelled something along the lines of "initial character/car" (which would start from a fresh power on) and "any character/car" (which would start from a save). If the fastest character/car is accessible from the very start of the game, then naturally that would be the only branch, and/or would obsolete the any character/car branch; but I imagine in most cases the fastest character/car will be locked at the start of the game.
There are noticeable differences between the nature of the games (with regards to "character choice") listed in Groups 1 and 3 and those in Group 2 here imo.
The character choices in the former are strictly mutually exclusive, either as "mode" choices at the start of the game (Super Mario Bros. 2 and Castlevania: Bloodlines) or path options at some point during the game (Castlevania III: Dracula's Curse). In other words, it is an internal condition in these games and a choice made at a single point.
On the other hand, the "character choices" in the latter are arbitrary constrains: there are either multiple chances to change the character being used throughout the game(Super Mario Bros. 2 and Super Mario Advance) or many, many different possible combos of team member choices (in the case of Final Fantasy, there are 6 choices for each of the 4 team members, even if the optimal route ends up being choosing the same type for all of them). In other words, it is an external condition in these games as it is either a consistent constraint applied throughout the entire game or a route choice out of a number of options too many to count (not literally but still), and there likely is not a reasonable way to name the default branch with "character choices" in this case as it's not a single choice.
In this context, I think it's generally much more reasonable to name the branch with the character choice when it's an internal condition and not so much in the other case.
feos wrote:
And the problem here is that putting chars into Standard labels may make it look like we accept different chars to Standard on their own, which we don't.
That is true but the FastestCompletion flag (literally) should help distinguish it in addition to the Alternative mark. The current placement of the Fastest Completion mark kinda makes it hard to notice but I guess that's a different topic.
So I was still missing an explanation on what makes fighting games with unlockable characters fundamentally different from all other games with unlockable characters - so different that they would require an exception in movie rules despite lots of people asking for power-on and savegame branches to co-exist for all games. The reason to have such an exception in the rules has to be really good and can't depend on someone's preference, because exceptions complicate things going forward. So when we add an exception, we need to understand it really well, and word it really well, for players to abide by those rules and fur judges to enforce them. The exception must feel natural to the people involved, because otherwise it feels forced and pointless. We don't want that in Movie Rules (anymore).
Since the staff talk was brought up, I thought maybe I'd find more information there, so I'll try to go through points mentioned there and see if the current system handles them or not.
Reminder: We're discussing a situation when we have 2 movies of a fighting (or racing) game, and an unlockable character is the fastest. The question is whether we can have both as branches in Standard and why.- "NewGame+" does not work as a branch label in fighting games where you unlock a char.
Indeed, we're switching from that label which only works for unlockable modes, over to "savegame" which seems to communicate the main point accurately in all cases. We also have a movie tag for it that basically means the same thing.
An icon was suggested, but we don't put icons into encode subtitles or youtube titles, and it'd mean the same thing as the "savegame" branch that does go into video.
- They can't be separate branches, because then they'd have to be labeled by character name, which would mean we have to allow different chars to co-exist in Standard (or look like we already do).
Not true. As I mentioned in the previous post, we only put the char name in the branch label if showcasing that specific char was the sole purpose of the movie and it didn't end up in Standard. Since Standard wants optimality within certain allowed goals, only the most optimal char is allowed, so whichever is currently known to be optimal for a particular goal will be used. If a different char is discovered to be more optimal, its movie will obsolete, and neither needs a char name.
The savegame branch would just be labeled "savegame" + whatever other standard goal it would have, if applicable. For for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance it becomes "Arcade Mode" and "Arcade Mode, savegame".
If a suboptimal character is submitted just for entertainment, and it succeeds in that, it will be put into the branch label. And it still doesn't mean all other branches of that game now have to spell out the char, because they still only aim for the optimal one.
One semi-exception to requiring only optimal chars in Standard is cases when chars actually work as different game modes because of how different they are. Then they go into the label.
That's all I could find that didn't look like miscommunication, uncertainty, or repetition. In the next post, that will hopefully be the last one, I'll do numbers and count opinions.
Warning: When making decisions, I try to collect as much data as possible before actually deciding. I try to abstract away and see the principles behind real world events and people's opinions. I try to generalize them and turn into something clear and reusable. I hate depending on unpredictable and having to make lottery guesses. Any problem can be solved by systems thinking and acting.
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feos wrote:
- They can't be separate branches, because then they'd have to be labeled by character name, which would mean we have to allow different chars to co-exist in Standard (or look like we already do).
Not true. As I mentioned in the previous post, we only put the char name in the branch label if showcasing that specific char was the sole purpose of the movie and it didn't end up in Standard. Since Standard wants optimality within certain allowed goals, only the most optimal char is allowed, so whichever is currently known to be optimal for a particular goal will be used. If a different char is discovered to be more optimal, its movie will obsolete, and neither needs a char name.
Misinterpreting my concerns:
Spikestuff wrote:
A character name as a branch implies we would accept and publish every character. Which isn't good on the site side, as Judges and Publishers will have to deal with a "mess" of fighting game TASes.
But I already experimented with that idea with 5 separate characters in Tekken 3 and they're ineligible to be accepted due to Yoshimitsu (and that puddle can get muddier, but let's avoid that puddle) and of course Guilty Gear X as I referred to earlier.
tl;dr what I wrote.
Is unlock character faster?
> Yes
Obsolete.
Spikestuff wrote:
Understand what we, the side that's against this arbitrary branch is trying to tell you. Don't gloss over it.
I'm not responding back if you don't get our point of concern, cause everything doesn't always work. And definitely doesn't work here for fighting games.
WebNations/Sabih wrote:
+fsvgm777 never censoring anything.
Disables Comments and Ratings for the YouTube account.Something better for yourself and also others.
The savegame branch would just be labeled "savegame" + whatever other standard goal it would have, if applicable. For for Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance it becomes "Arcade Mode" and "Arcade Mode, savegame".
Just a suggestion on inclusion of “savegame” as part of a branch name (for any genre): Have “savegame” always be the first part of the branch name as it’s the main differentiator for that particular branch. Then any additional branch name identifiers would follow.
So for the above example: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance “savegame, arcade mode”
A character name as a branch implies we would accept and publish every character. Which isn't good on the site side, as Judges and Publishers will have to deal with a "mess" of fighting game TASes.
But I already experimented with that idea with 5 separate characters in Tekken 3 and they're ineligible to be accepted due to Yoshimitsu (and that puddle can get muddier, but let's avoid that puddle) and of course Guilty Gear X as I referred to earlier.
I'm not seeing any misinterpretation.
Spikestuff wrote:
tl;dr what I wrote.
Is unlock character faster?
> Yes
Obsolete.
You stated an opinion. I'll count opinions in the next post.
Spikestuff wrote:
Spikestuff wrote:
Understand what we, the side that's against this arbitrary branch is trying to tell you. Don't gloss over it.
I'm not responding back if you don't get our point of concern, cause everything doesn't always work. And definitely doesn't work here for fighting games.
Which part of myexplanations fails to work in fighting games and why, exactly?
DrD2k9 wrote:
Just a suggestion on inclusion of “savegame” as part of a branch name (for any genre): Have “savegame” always be the first part of the branch name as it’s the main differentiator for that particular branch. Then any additional branch name identifiers would follow.
So for the above example: Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance “savegame, arcade mode”
I don't mind.
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 really don't quite get what's so bad about having seperate publications for fresh starts and save starts in fighting games (and racing games, and other games where the game is still played from a 'new game' state - but in an unlocked (hard) mode). I do get the concern of it needing to be clear, also in the obsoletion chain, of what the actual fastest completion is. I guess you would generally be mostly interested in the save start obsoletion chain (which could possibly include fresh starts as well).
The problem in my mind is more that if, for a certain game, the save start is really competitive, and then someone decides to make a fresh start TAS that is, from an optimization standpoint, already obsolete. I would hope that such TASes, and taking the problem a bit broader, those TASes that are aimed more at getting a publication than showcasing the best of TAS, just don't get made, but probably that will not be the case. I can imagine the rules should give leeway for rejections in such cases, even if there is no previously published movie in that specific branch.
I really don't quite get what's so bad about having seperate publications for fresh starts and save starts in fighting games (and racing games, and other games where the game is still played from a 'new game' state - but in an unlocked (hard) mode). I do get the concern of it needing to be clear, also in the obsoletion chain, of what the actual fastest completion is. I guess you would generally be mostly interested in the save start obsoletion chain (which could possibly include fresh starts as well).
The problem in my mind is more that if, for a certain game, the save start is really competitive, and then someone decides to make a fresh start TAS that is, from an optimization standpoint, already obsolete. I would hope that such TASes, and taking the problem a bit broader, those TASes that are aimed more at getting a publication than showcasing the best of TAS, just don't get made, but probably that will not be the case. I can imagine the rules should give leeway for rejections in such cases, even if there is no previously published movie in that specific branch.
Movies that have issues with optimisation can be and often are rejected even when there is no previously published movie. Just look at the recent Segapede drama for an example.
I think there is somewhat of a contradiction over the fact that we'd only accept the most optimal default character for Standard while giving a "free pass" there to an unlocked one regardless of how fast it is in comparison. I mean, what if it's the slowest character? Or at least slower than the second-best default one?
I’ll use a reply to this question to submit my perspective here:
I don’t like any save-anchored run obsoleting a run based on a clean start.
I don’t see a point in having a save anchored run be slower than the clean run unless it introduces a significant amount of new/different content. I personally don’t see a different move set (from an unlocked fighter) as qualifying as significantly new/different content in terms of gameplay. So for fighting games, my perspective is as follows:
A clean start run can only be accepted to standard using the optimal base character.
A save anchored run using an unlocked character can only be accepted to standard if that unlocked character is faster than using the fastest base character. This would not obsolete but be published along side the clean start run.
If multiple unlockable characters are more optimal than any of the base roster, then only the most optimal unblocked character is eligible for standard publication as a save anchored movie. Unlockable characters can obsolete each other’s save anchored publications, but cannot obsolete the clean start run.
If no unlockable characters are faster than the fastest base character and no new content is introduced, then there’s no reason to have a save anchored branch in Standard publication for that fighting game.
The branch name needs to indicate that the run is save anchored without using the fighter’s name in order to prevent potential confusion that the site would accept all character runs.
I think my perspective rectifies the contradiction moozooh mentions about a “free pass” to unlocked characters.
As far as a name for save anchored branches:
“savegame” is good.
A similar option that may be even slightly more descriptive that the run is starting from a saved point is “save start” or “savestart” if we want to eliminate the space.
There’s also the option of using an icon to indicate that the run starts from a save anchored point. In staff chat, the classic disk icon that is used as a save icon in much software was suggested.
